Touch Observations for Class

        Our skin is essential to our emotional connection with other living and non-living things. Not only is it essential to fully functioning people but it is even more essential to those who are blind and see with their haptic perception. They cannot touch color but they can map out a room in their minds just by feeling everything located in it and distinguish what everything is just by recognizing its texture and size. They don’t have to see the impending storm on the horizon to feel its moisture in the air or feel the sun beat down on there skin after the storm passes.

        All of these sensations are transmitted throughout our adult bodies over approximately 2 square yards to our brains registering the beauty of the day or the sweet embrace of a loved one or even the harsh interactions with rude manner-less people who shove their way passed. Every hug I give to my son is registered through his skin starting with his mostly unnoticeable hair that covers his whole body and his glabrous hands that are hugging me back that sends information through the outer layer of epidermis skin to the inner layer of dermis skin. From there it is transmitted to somatosensory receptors that are located throughout his spine and then it follows a fast path through large fibers of the lemniscal system. Its final destination is the somatosensory cortex of the brain where it registers my warm loving embrace as comforting him or protecting him or just marveling in the simple gesture of squeezable goodness. The importance of skin is truly beyond measure because without it we could not register pain or register real love. Skin allows us to feel temperature changes and vibrations of sound, it allows us to truly experience the world around us by not only seeing and hearing it but physically getting involved in it. With every passing movement we make our skin informs us to everything that we're walking on or touching, informing us as to how to dress to feel comfortable in changing temperatures and what to avoid in order to avoid pain or if the pain is occurring informs us so we can move to stop it or what to seek help for, may it be a burn or intense pressure. If problems with the skin sense should occur phantom feelings can arise leading us to think such things as insects crawling on us when they’re really not. Also, we can sometimes have phantom temperature feelings arise that cause our body heat to rise or our cooling mechanisms to kick in despite temperature stabilization around us. These phantom symptoms can inform us that something else may be going on with our minds or bodies that we need to address or maybe just be the reaction of eating a chili pepper or York peppermint patty.

       While it is important to hear and see everything and even smell and taste everything it is just as equally important that we feel everything so that we can attain as much out of life as we humanly can. It is a true travesty that there are people in this world that do not have pain receptors in their skin and therefore cannot feel if something is hurting them consequentially leading to their early death. Those people miss out on so many aspects to life because even though we would essentially like to avoid needless pain, to not feel it means an inability to know personal limitations that create longevity.