How come humans detect some extremely hot things as being cold things, and vice versa?

434 views

For example, dry ice. When you touch it, the temperature is so cold it burns. Same thing for hot, hot water. Skin, dude.

In: Biology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

We’ve got both heat-sensing nerves and cold-sensing nerves that are triggered and various temperatures. But some of the cold-sensing nerves can also be triggered with things that are hot, alongside with the warm-sensing ones. This can give the wrong information at times. You can also trick your body into feeling like it’s burning when it’s not by mixing the two – in a psych class, we had a setup with ice water in one bucket and warm water in the other, and if you soaked one hand in each simultaneously and then transferred both to the same, whichever moved felt like it was burning. You can sometimes get the same feeling stepping into a warm shower with cold toes in the winter.

Edit: double-checked and fixed a few things

You are viewing 1 out of 5 answers, click here to view all answers.