Why does pinching a tiny part of your body hurt a lot more than pinching a very large part of your body?

Question

If you pinch a tiny bit of your body, it hurts really badly, but when you pinch a very large area, it hurts much less. Why?

In: 0

Answer 1

There’s this thing called lateral inhibition that happens in the spinal cord. Basically, if an intense signal from only one neuron comes through, it goes on to the brain uninterrupted. But if an intense signal from multiple neurons comes through, when they meet up in the spinal cord they all tell each other to chill our before heading to the brain.