Touch is the sense of feeling or pressure perception using the skin. The skin is the largest sensory organ of the body. The skin is sensitive to many different kinds of "stimuli", such as touch, pressure, and temperature. Within the skin, there are different types of receptors that are activated by different stimuli. When a receptor is activated, it triggers a series of nerve impulses. For a person to "feel" the stimulus, the nerve impulses must make their way up to brain.
While the other four senses are located in specific parts of the body, the sense of touch is found all over. The complete sense of touch is made up of somatosenses including: cutaneous (skin), kinesthesia (movement) and visceral (internal) senses. Visceral senses have to do with sensory information from within the body, like stomach aches. The sense of touch originates in the bottom layer of skin which is called the dermis. The dermis is filled with lots of tiny nerve endings which give you information about the things with which your body comes in contact. They do this by carrying the information to the spinal cord, which sends messages to the brain where the feeling is registered.
The nerve endings in the skin relay sesnations of hot, cold, pain, and pressure. Overall, the body has about twenty differnt types of nerve endings that all send messages to your brain, but the senses of temperature, pain and pressure are the most common.
The sense of touch allows us to tell the difference between rough and smooth, soft and hard, and wet and dry. Some parts of your skin have more nerve endings that other parts, so some parts are more sensitive to touch than others are. Your fingertips, tongue, and lips have the most nerve endings.
