Example being poking a zit on the side of your face and then causing an itchy feeling on the back of your neck
In: 200
Apologies for answering anecdotally on ELI5, but apparently not everyone experiences this.
I asked a medical professional, and they had no idea what I was talking about.
A different medical professional told me it was likely nerves in the same “pathway” relaying the information to the brain incorrectly.
I can’t speak to your exact example, but some nerve wirings are just frankly a bit weird owing to slightly ambiguous biological origins. For example, pain in males’ testicles is often felt as being somewhere in the abdomen despite the testes being outside of the abdomen. This happens because male testicles and female ovaries share their origins as being inside the abdomen in the fetal stage of development.
Anesthesiologist here, if I’m understanding your question correctly, you may be talking about “referred pain”. It more often happens with sensation associated with your organs (as opposed to muscle or skin where you can easily localize where that sensation is). This is why heart attacks can be perceived as pain to the left arm/jaw. Or why GI issues can feel like vague pain that moved around. The reason this happens is bc of the way these nerves are wired.
Edit: I realize I missed your example lol. I don’t think I can explain why poking a zit can cause back itchiness. Maybe a neurologist colleague out there can explain that 😂
Not a doctor but nerves are surprisingly long and many are pretty close together.
[https://my-ms.org/anatomy_nervous_system.htm](https://my-ms.org/anatomy_nervous_system.htm)
See the images on the above site. Doesn’t seem impossible that you could get a quirky shared impulse once & awhile.
Wait, this doesn’t happen to everyone?
Look up dermatomes, basically your body develops in a segmental way, where sensation can be felt in a part of the body that receives innervation from nerves in the same spinal segments that innervation the area that is actually affected.
What you’ve described is somewhat different though, as side of the face is innervated by the trigeminal nerve and back of neck is cervical spinal nerves, so there is probably a different reason for that sensation.
I qtip my ears and I get this odd tingle in my throat. Almost like an itching feeling. Also there is a spot on my back, if my wife hits it just right, my toes tingle like they are being scratched. It’s odd for sure. The qtip one though is most annoying because it usually forces me into a coughing fit.
Fun fact, the somatosensory cortex of our brain is mapped out to the parts of our body. The part representing the genitals and the feet are adjacent to each other. It’s known that amputees have a phantom limb where it feels to them that their limb still exists. They can actually touch their phantom limb by touching the part of the body represented adjacent to the amputated limb. So in the case of amputated genitals, one can stimulate their phantom genitals by touching their feet. Foot fetish is theorized to occur when there is excess cross wiring with the genitals in the somatosensory cortex.
If I stroke the inside of my right elbow with a finger, I can feel a tingling on the right side of my tongue.
I have a weird sensation on the skin in between my fingers (where they meet the hands) every time someone twists my middle two toes. it’s enough of a reaction that my fingers clench and I freak out. Much to the amusements of my wife and kids.
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