| acupuncture | Centuries-old technique for eliminating pain by insertion of fine needles into the body at specific sites
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| allodynia | Pain from stimulation that is normally not painful, sometimes experienced at a location other than at the stimulated area of the body.
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| analgesia | The elimination of pain. See endorphins.
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| Braille | A system of writing in which letters or characters are represented by patterns of tangible dots.
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| diffuse fibers | In touch system, first-order afferent neurons having large receptive fields with poorly defined borders.
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| diplesthesia | In touch, the illusory experience of two objects when only one is actually present.
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| endorphins | Naturally occurring morphine-like chemicals that can ease pain. See analgesia.
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| free nerve endings | Nerve cells in the skin that mediate pain perception and cells in the olfactory epithelium that mediate the common chemical sense.
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| gate theory of pain | The view that perception of pain involves the interplay between two fiber groups, one which can modulate the strength of signals in the other.
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| haptics | Sensory information that depends upon both touch and kinesthesis.
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| kinesthesis | Information about the movement and position of a limb that derives from receptors that are in the muscles, tendons, and joints of that limb.
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| localization ability | An observer's capacity to identify the position of some stimulus.
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| mechanoreceptors | Receptors that respond to deformation of the skin.
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| Meissner corpuscles | An encapsulated touch receptor located in the skin's upper layer.
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| Merkel disk | Touch receptor located at an intermediate depth within the skin.
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| nociceptors | A special class of skin receptors responsive to noxious stimulation. See free nerve endings.
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| Pacinian corpuscle | An encapsulated touch receptor located in the skin's lower layer.
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| phantom limb | The perception that an amputated limb is still attached to the body.
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| proprioception | The sense that enables one to feel where one's limbs are.
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| punctate fibers | In touch system, first-order afferent neurons have small receptive fields with sharply defined borders.
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| rapidly adapting (RA) fibers | First-order afferent neurons that respond in a relatively transient manner to sustained deformation of the skin.
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| Ruffini endings | An unencapsulated touch receptor located at an intermediate depth within the skin.
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| slowly adapting (SA) fibers | First-order afferent neurons that respond in a relatively sustained manner to sustained deformation of the skin.
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| tactile agnosia | An inability to recognize objects by touch, resulting from damage to the somatosensory cortex.
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| touch acuity | The ability to distinguish a small separation between two closely adjacent stimuli applied to the skin.
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| unilateral neglect | Neurological disorder in which a patient ignores events on one side of the body.
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