
Use your tongue, fingertips, or even a feather to trace circles around the navel and tease your way down and all around the stomach. Navel and lower stomachīeing dangerously close to the genitals makes this area especially arousing. You can also take advantage of those sensory receptors by whispering or lightly blowing into their ear for more tingly feels.
Nerve endings skin#
With sensitive skin on the outside and hundreds of sensory receptors on the inside, the ears top the list of erogenous zones for many people.įor some sexy aural action that’s sure to please, try lightly kissing, licking, or nibbling your partner’s earlobes. Gentle tugging can send waves of pleasure through the body. To amp up the pleasure, run your fingernails lightly over the scalp, paying special attention to the space behind the ears and just above the neck.ĭon’t forget about the hair.
Nerve endings full#
The scalp is full of nerve endings, and even the slightest brush of the hair can send tingles through your body. Here are some unlikely pleasure points that are often overlooked. When it comes to erogenous zones, it isn’t all about the nips, nubs, and slits. Persistent pain is in many respects a disease of the nervous system, not merely a symptom of some other disease process.Share on Pinterest Illustrations by Brittany England The result is a state of hypersensitivity in which pain persists and can even be evoked by normally innocuous stimuli. Persistent injury can lead to changes in the nervous system that amplify and prolong the “pain” signal. Prostaglandins also contribute to the clinical condition of allodynia, in which innocuous stimuli can produce pain, as when sunburned skin is touched. Prostaglandins enhance the sensitivity of receptors to tissue damage and ultimately can induce more intense pain sensations. Tissue injury also causes the release of numerous chemicals at the site of damage and inflammation. Histamine is an example of such a nociceptor, and it can be released in response to certain bug bites or allergies. Some nociceptors in the skin respond to chemical stimuli that cause itch. Interestingly, these same molecules respond to plant-derived chemicals, such as capsaicin, garlic, and wasabi, that can produce pain. Different nociceptor subsets produce molecules that are responsible for the response to noxious (i.e., painful) thermal, mechanical, or chemical stimulation. The sensory fibers that respond to stimuli that damage tissue and can cause pain are called nociceptors. The threshold is lowest on the fingers and lips. Not surprisingly, acuity is greatest in the most densely nerve-packed areas of the body. This method involves touching the skin with calipers at two points. Neurologists measure sensitivity by determining the patient’s two-point threshold, the distance between two points on the skin necessary in order for the individual to distinguish two distinct stimuli from just one. The fingertips are good at touch discrimination, but the torso is not. For example, the cornea is several hundred times more sensitive to painful stimuli than are the soles of the feet. These varying responses are based largely on the number and distribution of receptors. Larger areas of the cortex are devoted to sensations from the hands and lips much smaller cortical regions represent less sensitive parts of the body.ĭifferent parts of the body vary in their sensitivity to tactile and painful stimuli. The transmission of this information is highly topographic, meaning that the body is represented in an orderly fashion at different levels of the nervous system. Signals from touch receptors pass via sensory nerves to the spinal cord, where they synapse, or make contact with, other nerve cells, which in turn send the information to the thalamus and sensory cortex. They can be triggered by the slightest movement of the hairs. The nerve endings are remarkably sensitive. In hairy skin areas, some receptors consist of webs of sensory nerve cell endings wrapped around the base of hairs.

We do this through touch receptors in the skin.

This descending pathway sends messages to the spinal cord where it suppresses the transmission of tissue damage signals to the higher brain centers. These messages can be suppressed by a system of neurons that originates in the midbrain. From the spinal cord, the impulses are carried to the brainstem, thalamus, and cerebral cortex and ultimately perceived as pain. Pain messages are picked up by receptors and transmitted to the spinal cord via small myelinated fibers and very small unmyelinated fibers.
