Touch Threshold Case Study

Touch threshold
Problem statement
Determination of two points threshold (lateral and longitudinal) as function of orientation of ‘alsthesiometer’ on forearm, employing method of constant stimulation. introduction SKIN: the skin is innervated by large and small myelinated neurons. these neurons terminate in various kind of encapsulated endings called as hair follicles. for many years a consented effort was made to correlate specific sensations as cold with the type of encapsulated endings but this has proven fruitless. although the effort to correlate sensations let alone with type of nerve endings has been generally unsuccessful; certain things must be said about the type of ending involved in particular sensation. The mediation of the touch

And the alsthesiometer was first settled at the distance of 0.2cm and the alsthesiometer was touched/contacted on the skin of the subject. Where the subject has to report whether he/she have felt the sensation of one point or two points in longitudinal position. And 25 trails were carried out on 0.2 cm to note down the reading. The same procedure was applied at the distance of 0.5cm and 25 more readings were noted on the longitudinal position. Same procedure was applied for 0.7cm where the alsthesiometer was fixed at 0.7cm and readings were noted with same procedure. Again the distance of alsthesiometer was changed at different measurements 1cm and 1.5cm to note down the results of touch sensations.
After taking readings on the longitudinal position the position of alsthesiometer was changed to lateral postion.The procedure started with the same measurement of 0.2cm and 25 trials were carried out. But every time after carrying out the trial the position of the alsthesiometer was changed and touched the skin on different positions. After changing the distance of alsthesiometer on 7cm, 0.5cm, 1cm and 1.5cm new trials were carried out. And readings were carried out.
In next step the percentages of 1 and 2 point threshold were calculated on longitudinal position
In the last step the percentages of 1 and 2 point threshold were calculated on lateral positions. To determine whether the hypothesis has been

As this practical is about TOUCH threshold in which we have to see that how are skin respond to some external stimulus .this response highly depends on the intensity of that stimuli. During the experiment we noted that the subject was unable to respond to stimuli sometimes. This really doesn’t mean that the experimenter is biased to produce some specific results. The subject should honestly report weather she is feeling the sensation of touch or not.
Conclusion
The first hypothesis of this experiment was ‘The longitudinal threshold has greater frequency of two point touch thresholds compared to lateral one’ which has been verified according to our results. We identified that frequency of touch threshold vary from person to person. As the distance increases the frequency for sensation of 1 or 2 point threshold also increases .hence our 2nd hypothesis is also verified which was ‘As the distance/length of two points’ increases, frequency of two point threshold