14 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Can humans sense electric shock?
Humans can sense electric shock, but not directly. These effects are sensed by different types of receptors in your skin and nervous system that detect pain, temperature, pressure and touch.
We can't sense wetness directly either. Wetness perception is linked to our capacity to feel low temperature and tactile sensations like pressure and texture. We don't have skin humidity receptors (i.e., hygroreceptors) that can detect moisture on the skin surface. Wetness is more of a “perceptual illusion” that our brain evokes based on our prior experiences with stimuli that we have learned[1] are wet.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394012008166
So, when you shocked yourself on a doorknob, you were not sensing the transfer of electrons per se, but rather the effects of that transfer on your body tissues and nerves. Similarly, when you feel wet, you are not sensing the presence of water molecules on your skin, but rather the changes in temperature and pressure[2] that they cause.
2: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394012008166
With that said, I think it's incomplete to say we can't sense wetness. It's true that we don't have specific receptors to sense water molecules on the skin. However, your body has the essential building blocks to infer 'wetness'. If the accuracy is high enough, you could argue that you can indeed sense wetness. Your somatosensory system[3] is made up of 4 main sensory nerves:
3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK532291/
If you think of the stimuli from these fibres as individual words. Your brain interprets a combination of these 'words' to build a variety of sentences. And these sentences can represent the more nuanced sensations such as wetness.
Comment by saganakist at 17/02/2023 at 10:28 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Can't we extent that to touch as well? No clue about the process behind it, but probably something about the nerves noticing deformation or pressure. Or is it really them getting "touched"?