Eli5: How does the brain keep track of the exact stop where the stimulus or an injury occurs?

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As the human skin is pretty large how the brain accurately map the source of injury or touch and how does it make the pain or the feeling appear from that particular place?

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The human brain is *really* good at telling where stuff is on certain parts of your body, and *really* bad at others.

Since there are a lot of individual nerves on your hand and fingers, you can usually pinpoint exactly where the injury is.

Since there are much less nerves on your back, you could kind of tell the general area of where it is, but the brain doesn’t really care.

The body can tell which nerve is sending the pain signal, it’s just a matter of whether or not you have a lot of nerves there that decides the accuracy of that knowledge.

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