How The Body Differentiates Between A Burn And A Cut
Thursday, May 21, 2009 - 20:35
in Biology & Nature
You can tell without looking whether you've been stuck by a pin or burnt by a match. But how? In research that overturns conventional wisdom, scientists have shown that this sensory discrimination begins in the skin at the very earliest stages of neuronal information processing, with different populations of sensory neurons -- called nociceptors -- responding to different kinds of painful stimuli.