Tactile discrimination
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Tactile discrimination is the ability to differentiate information through the sense of touch. The somatosensory system is the nervous system pathway that is responsible for this essential survival ability used in adaptation.[1] There are various types of tactile discrimination. One of the most well known and most researched is two-point discrimination, the ability to differentiate between two different tactile stimuli which are relatively close together.[2] Other types of discrimination like graphesthesia and spatial discrimination also exist but are not as extensively researched.[3] Tactile discrimination is something that can be stronger or weaker in different people and two major conditions, chronic pain and blindness, can affect it greatly. Blindness increases tactile discrimination abilities which is extremely helpful for tasks like reading braille.[4] In contrast, chronic pain conditions, like arthritis, decrease a person's tactile discrimination.[5] One other major application of tactile discrimination is in new prosthetics and robotics which attempt to mimic the abilities of the human hand. In this case tactile sensors function similarly to mechanoreceptors in a human hand to differentiate tactile stimuli.[6]