The DOI matches its Crossref record; 37 of the 37 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Temperature sensitivity of the body surface over the life span
Abstract
Detection thresholds to warming and cooling were measured in 13 regions of the body in 60 adults aged between 18 and 88 years. From these thresholds were constructed maps of thermal sensitivity homologous to body maps of spatial acuity (in the older literature two-point discrimination), long known to the somatosensory scientist. Maps of cold and warm sensitivity for young, middle-aged and elderly adults, show how sensitivity changes with age in the various body regions. Three characteristics emerge, irrespective of age: (1) sensitivity varies approximately 100-fold over the body surface. The face, especially near the mouth, is exquisitely sensitive, the extremities, by comparison, poor, other regions, intermediate. (2) All body regions are more sensitive to cold than to warm. (3) The better a region is at detecting cold, the better it is at detecting warm. With age, thermal sensitivity declines. The greatest changes take place in the extremities, especially the foot, where thresholds often become too large to measure. Central regions give up their sensitivity with age more slowly, and even (as in the lips) inconsequentially. Similar age-related changes have also previously been shown to characterize spatial acuity.
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Cites
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Spatial Acuity of the Body Surface over the Life Span
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Age and race effects on pain sensitivity and modulation among middle-aged and older adults
Riley, J. L., Cruz-Almeida, Y., Glover, T. L., King, C. D., Goodin, B. R., Sibille, K. T., Bartley, E. J., Herbert, M. S., Sotolongo, A., Fessler, B. J., et al. (2014) · The Journal of Pain · doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2013.10.015 · Cited by 142
Metadata
- Authors
- C. STEVENS KENNETH K. CHOO, J.
- Venue
- Somatosensory & Motor Research
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1998-01
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 13-28
- ISSN
- 0899-0220 (ISSN-L)
- 1369-1651
- OpenAlex
- W2243622568
- Cited by
- 361
- References
- 37
- FWCI
- 1.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
