Sensitivity, the ability of an organism or organ to respond to external stimuli

1. Mechanoreceptors: These receptors perceive sensations such as pressure, vibrations, and

texture. There are four known types of mechanoreceptors whose only function is to
perceive indentions and vibrations of the skin: Merkel's disks, Meissner's corpuscles,
Ruffini's corpuscles, and Pacinian corpuscles.
The most sensitive mechanoreceptors, Merkel's disks and Meissner's corpuscles, are
found in the very top layers of the dermis and epidermis and are generally found in nonhairy skin such as the palms, lips, tongue, soles of feet, fingertips, eyelids, and the face.
Merkel's disks are slowly adapting receptors and Meissner's corpuscles are rapidly
adapting receptors so your skin can perceive both when you are touching something and
how long the object is touching the skin. Your brain gets an enormous amount of
information about the texture of objects through your fingertips because the ridges that
make up your fingerprints are full of these sensitive mechanoreceptors.
Located deeper in the dermis and along joints, tendons, and muscles are Ruffini's
corpuscles and Pacinian corpuscles. These mechanoreceptors can feel sensations such as
vibrations traveling down bones and tendons, rotational movement of limbs, and the
stretching of skin. This greatly aids your ability to do physical activities such as walking
and playing ball.
2. Thermoreceptors: As their name suggests, these receptors perceive sensations related to
the temperature of objects the skin feels. They are found in the dermis layer of the skin.
There are two basic categories of thermoreceptors: hot and cold receptors.
Cold receptors start to perceive cold sensations when the surface of the skin drops below
95 F. They are most stimulated when the surface of the skin is at 77 F and are no
longer stimulated when the surface of the skin drops below 41 F. This is why your feet
or hands start to go numb when they are submerged in icy water for a long period of time.
Hot receptors start to perceive hot sensations when the surface of the skin rises above 86
F and are most stimulated at 113 F. But beyond 113 F, pain receptors take over to
avoid damage being done to the skin and underlying tissues.
Thermoreceptors are found all over the body, but cold receptors are found in greater
density than heat receptors. The highest concentration of thermoreceptors can be found in
the face and ears (hence why your nose and ears always get colder faster than the rest of
your body on a chilly winter day).
3. Pain receptors: The scientific term is nocireceptor. "Noci-" in Latin means "injurious" or
"hurt" which is a good clue that these receptors detect pain or stimuli that can or does
cause damage to the skin and other tissues of the body. There are over three million pain
receptors throughout the body, found in skin, muscles, bones, blood vessels, and some
organs. They can detect pain that is caused by mechanical stimuli (cut or scrape), thermal
stimuli (burn), or chemical stimuli (poison from an insect sting).

These receptors cause a feeling of sharp pain to encourage you to quickly move away
from a harmful stimulus such as a broken piece of glass or a hot stove stop. They also
have receptors that cause a dull pain in an area that has been injured to encourage you not
to use or touch that limb or body part until the damaged area has healed. While it is never
fun to activate these receptors that cause pain, they play an important part in keeping the
body safe from serious injury or damage by sending these early warning signals to the
brain.
4. Proprioceptors: In Latin, the word "proprius" means "one's own" and is used in the
name of these receptors because they sense the position of the different parts of the body
in relation to each other and the surrounding environment. Proprioceptors are found in
tendons, muscles, and joint capsules. This location in the body allows these special cells
to detect changes in muscle length and muscle tension. Without proprioceptors, we would
not be able to do fundamental things such as feeding or clothing ourselves.
The ability to distinguish between one point or two points of sensation depends on
how dense mechanoreceptors are in the area of the skin being touched. You most
likely found that certain areas of your body are much more sensitive to touch than
other areas. Highly sensitive areas such as the fingertips and tongue can have as
many as 100 pressure receptors in one cubic centimeter. Less sensitive areas, such
as your back, can have as few as 10 pressure receptors in one cubic centimeter.
Because of this, areas such as your back are much less responsive to touch and can
gather less information about what is touching it than your fingertips can.