The reason why we feel something is wet

(Human resources) - Human sensitivity to wetness plays an important role in many aspects of everyday life.

Whether feeling moisture, sweat or a damp towel, we often encounter stimuli that make us feel wet. Although it seems simple, to feel that something is wet is a feat because our skin does not have receptors that sense the wetness. In fact, the concept of wetness can be the "sensory hallucination" that the brain evokes based on our previous experiences with the stimulus that we have learned to be wet.

So how would a person know if he was sitting on a wet chair or going through a puddle? Researchers at Loughborough University and Oxylane Research say wet awareness is intertwined with our ability to feel low temperatures and sense of touch like weight and texture. They also found the role of nerve fibers A - sensory nerves that carry temperature and tactile information from the skin to the brain - and the effect of neural activity on the perception of wetness.

Finally, they hypothesized that because hairless skin is more sensitive to thermal stimuli, it may be more sensitive to moisture than non-haired skin (eg, the palm of the hand, the soles of the feet) , more sensitive to tactile stimuli.

In the experiment, Davide Filingeri gave 13 healthy male students exposure to warm, neutral and cold stimuli. They tested on the arm positions of the study subjects (haired skin) and on the fingers (smooth skin area). The researchers also tested the stimuli along with and not with a nerve compression. Neural compression is performed using a vapor compression pump (blood pressure) that causes enough pressure to reduce the sensitivity of moisture A.

They found that humidity awareness increased when temperature dropped, meaning participants were more likely to feel cold and moist stimuli than wet or neutral stimuli. The researchers also found subjects with reduced sensitivity to moisture when nerve A activity was blocked, and the skin with fur was more sensitive to wetness than non-haired skin.

These results contribute to understanding how people perceive wet conditions and present a new model of how the brain handles this feeling.

The researchers developed models of neurophysiological experiments to assess differences in polygonal differentiation with cold sensations and tactile sensations.

"Our results provide evidence for the existence of a special information processing model that underlies the representation of a typical wet nerve stimulus."

The article titled "Whys wet feels wet? A neurophysiological model of human cutaneous wetness sensitivity" is published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. This article is marked as best as part of the APSselect program of the American Physiological Society.