?How the skin feels the touch

Scientists have created a technique that allows to penetrate the secrets of cutaneous mechanoreceptors.
One of the most poorly studied aspects of the nervous system - a skin sensitivity. In general terms, it is clear that for her answer mechanoreceptors, but they are responsible for it as organized as formed in the process of individual development - the answer to all these questions is still no. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University (USA) have tried to lift the veil of secrecy over the problem of skin reception and achieved some success in this.
Experimenting on mice, scientists have been able to understand the principles of elementary mechanosensitive neurons and their relation to the hair follicles. The result was obtained by the procedure established by researchers that could identify different populations of sensitive mechanoreceptors. As the researchers wrote in the journal Cell, a touch different recorded different types of receptors, but among them, according to scientists, there are three main types, and each - own combination mehanosensornyh nerve endings. Until now, such a correspondence between the neuron and the receptor could not see here: processes of neurons that innervate certain follicles come from the spinal cord and reach almost a meter in length. Thanks to our own set of nerve mechanoreceptors associated with hair bags, registering a certain type of touch. The arrangement of receptors themselves subject to strict order. They are decorated groups, information from which is collected in a single channel: neurons, accumulating information from nearby hair bags together in the spinal cord into a single "wire", which already goes to the brain. Mechanosensitive such wires in the spinal cord, presumably, thousands, and each receives the information from the site with about a hundred hairs. Such a tough order allows the encoding signal from the touch, which is then read and parsed by the brain. It is true, as noted by the researchers, whether they can distribute the data to the individual - the big question. We have in fact no such development of hair, like a mouse. It remains to hope that these receptor systems are quite conservative, at least in mammals and in general terms, are repeated in all species. But, as the authors point out, the main result of their work - is to create a methodology that allows us to see the relationship between high-sensitive mechanoreceptors. With it was at least understandable, how to study the formation and organization of these receptors in the skin and methods of encryption and transmission of nerve impulses from them to the brain.