What are the main examples of skin senses?

The main types of skin senses are the four central modalities of skin sensation: pain, pressure, warmth, and cold.

What are the skin senses and how do they relate to the experience of pain?

The skin sense psychology definition is sensations that rely on receptors in the skin. Without our skin senses, we would be unable to detect any pain on our skin's surface.

What is another name for skin senses in psychology?

Another name for skin senses in psychology is cutaneous senses.

What are some feelings your skin senses?

Some feelings our skin senses can detect include; vibration and texture.

Skin Senses: Definition, Types & Mechanisms

Q: What is the purpose of the skin senses?

There are many purposes of the skin senses. Without our skin senses, we would be unable to feel others or experience the power of touch. Touch is essential because it supports our development. From the moment we are born, an affectionate touch can promote our well-being.

Skin Senses

It's a cold winter day. As soon as you step outside, you feel pins and needles all over your face. Then the numbness starts to set in. Have you ever thought about how and why you experience these skin senses? Or worse -- what would it be like not to have them all?

Get started

Let's begin by discussing the skin senses psychology definition.
Is there a difference between the cutaneous vs skin senses?
As we continue, let's dive into the various mechanisms of skin senses.
Then let's explore what the types of skin sensations are.
Finally, let's discuss the purpose of the skin senses.

Skin Senses: Psychology Definition

Some may argue that our skin senses are the most important senses we have. As one of the heaviest and largest organs in the body, the skin works to protect our internal organs. Here's the definition of skin senses in psychology:

Skin senses: sensations that rely on receptors in the skin.

Receptors: sits on the inside or the surface of a cell and bind to a specific substance, e.g. neurotransmitters and elicit an effect in a cell.

Say you touch something hot; the neurotransmitter acetylcholine plays a role in the motor reflex of moving your hand away.

The skin has several layers and but our skin senses are primarily located in two layers:

Epidermis: This outer layer of the skin is made up of dead skin cells.
Dermis: The layer that sits just under the epidermis and contains mechanoreceptors that respond to different stimuli.

Types of Skin Sensation

Touch is a very broad way to describe our skin senses. There are several types of skin sensations that we may experience. However, there are four central modalities of skin sensation: pain, pressure, warmth, and cold.

The idea is that other skin senses we experience are just a variation or combination of these four modalities.

Tickling is a great example of how one or more of these types of skin sensations may be required to feel other sensations. Ticking occurs when adjacent pressure spots are stroked.

Or take another sensation, for example. Have you ever had a cold piece of medal pressed to your skin? If you were blindfolded, another sensation you may have guessed is that it was wet. This is because a wetness sensation still requires cold and pressure spots, which can lead to confusion between the two.

Cutaneous vs Skin Senses

When discussing cutaneous vs skin senses, the terms are essentially interchangeable.

Cutaneous senses refer to anything that we touch or feel through our skin.

It includes temperature, pressure, vibration, pain, and texture.

There are two types of touch a person may experience through their cutaneous senses -- fine touch and crude touch.

Fine touch: touch that can be localized.
Crude touch: touch that cannot be localized.

Some of our cutaneous senses can detect complex stimuli such as vibration and texture. These cutaneous skin senses require both spatial and temporal cues to be perceived.

Skin Senses, Man with glasses standing in cold blowing air in hands for warmth, StudySmarter Fig. 1 Our skin senses enable us to feel cold.

Mechanisms of Skin Senses

Have you ever wondered how or why you can distinguish hot from cold? Or a pinch from a tickle? Here we will discuss receptors, the central nervous system, and cognitive mechanisms of skin senses.

Mechanisms of Skin Senses: Receptors

Skin senses begin with receptors. There are several types of receptors, and they cover every layer of the skin.

Sensory receptors: types of sensory neurons with special endings located in the skin that respond to tactile and mechanical stimuli.

There are three types of receptors that allow our skin to pick up on several types of signals:

Mechanoreceptor (physical changes)
Thermoreceptors (temperature)
Nociceptors (pain)

Mechanoreceptors allow us to detect texture, pressure, and vibrations. There are four different types of mechanoreceptors.

Merkel's disks (detects small stationary objects)
Meissner's corpuscles (small, rapidly moving objects)
Ruffini's corpuscles (stretching skin senses)
Pacinian corpuscles (pressure and vibration skin senses)

Merkel's disks and Meissner's corpuscles are the most sensitive mechanoreceptors located on the top layers of the epidermis and dermis. They are often found in parts of the skin that are not hairy such as the fingertips, lips, face, eyelids, soles of feet, and palms.

Thermoreceptors are responsible for skin senses that detect the temperature of objects that touch the skin. There are two basic types of thermoreceptors (hot and cold receptors) located in the skin's dermis layer.

Some parts of the skin have more cold receptors than others, such as the ears and the nose. This explains why these body parts are often the first to feel cold on a cold day.

Nociceptors - are pain detectors that detect harmful skin senses in temperature (i.e. burn), chemicals (i.e. poisonous sting), and pressure (i.e. scrape/cut). While nociceptors are mostly located in our skin, they can also be found in our organs and muscles as well.

The human body has over 3 million nociceptors in the skin, bones, organs, and muscles.

Mechanisms of Skin Senses: Central Nervous System

While receptors are important parts of our skin senses, we wouldn't be able to understand what they mean or be aware of them without the central nervous system.

The central nervous system comprises the brain, brain stem, and spinal cord.

Signals received by the receptors travel through nerve fibers, up the spinal cord, through the brainstem, and to its final destination -- the brain.

Our skin senses are processed by the somatosensory cortex located in the parietal lobe. Every skin sense has a specific place in the somatosensory cortex where its signals are processed. However, not every skin sense takes up the same amount of space, which means that some areas of our body are more sensitive than others.

Our lips take up quite a bit of real estate in the somatosensory cortex. This explains why our lips are very sensitive and even why babies explore their world with their mouths.

Signals detected by our skin senses travel up one of two types of pathways:

Medial lemniscal pathway (larger fibers, carry information on touch).
Spinothalamic pathway (smaller fibers, that carry information on temperature and pain).

Pain is unique when it travels through the spinal cord because there is a type of gated mechanism that can either pass information and signals received to the brain or not.

The gate-control theory states that the spinal cord can block or "gate" pain signals from reaching the brain. Pain signals traveling down the spinal cord's nerve fibers are capable of opening this gate, while only activity coming from the brain (and some larger fibers) can close it again.

Skin Senses, Picture of little girl being tickled by two adults laying on blanket in grass, StudySmarter Fig. 2 Tickling is a skin sense that can be affected by cognition.

Mechanisms of Skin Senses: Cognition

Sensory receptors and the central nervous system are the most foundational mechanisms of skin senses. However, they do not stand alone in how we process sensations on our skin. Cognition is another important mechanism because our attitudes and perspectives affect how our skin senses certain stimuli.

Have you ever tried to tickle yourself? It's generally difficult to do. This is because when a tickle is self-administered, the somatosensory cortex is less activated than when the tickle comes from another person or object.

Our brains can also play tricks on us and convince us that we felt something when we didn't.

For example, people with phantom limb sensations experience skin sense that may convince them that their missing limb is still there. They can even experience intense pain because their mind convinces them it is there.

Purpose of the Skin Senses

So what is the purpose of the skin senses? Well, there are several! Without our skin senses, we would not be able to feel others or experience the power of touch.

Touch is important because it supports our development. From the moment we are born, an affectionate touch can promote our well-being.

Animal studies have helped us understand the importance of skin senses on development. Infant rats produce less growth hormone if their mother does not groom them. Infant monkeys become sad if they are not able to touch their mothers.

We also know that human babies who are born prematurely are often stimulated by a hand massage. This helps them gain weight faster so they can go home sooner.

Finally, several of our skin senses work to warn us of danger. Pain, arguably the most important skin sense for survival, tells us when there is a nearby threat.

Some people are born with the condition that prevents them from feeling pain. It may be easy to believe that a pain-free life would be a dream, but these individuals often have an increased risk of injury or developing illnesses. Why?

Pain acts as an alarm signal. Imagine if you could not feel the pain of your hand burning on a hot stove. Before realizing it, you have a severe burn that could have been avoided had you felt the pain sooner.

Skin Senses - Key takeaways

The skin sense psychology definition is sensations that rely on receptors in the skin.
When discussing cutaneous vs skin senses, the terms are essentially interchangeable.
There are four central modalities of skin sensation: pain, pressure, warmth, and cold.
There are three types of receptors that allow our skin to pick up on several types of signals:
- Mechanoreceptor (physical changes)
- Thermoreceptors (temperature)
- Nociceptors (pain)
Touch is important because it supports our development. From the moment we are born, an affectionate touch can promote our well-being.

Skin Senses

StudySmarter Editorial Team

Skin Senses: Psychology Definition

Types of Skin Sensation

Cutaneous vs Skin Senses