In Touch

Feeling a loved one’s hand in yours might bring pleasant sensations. But under the skin, it’s the Pacinian corpuscle (Pc) which helps to detect their first touch. Here, enhanced focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy strips away the layer of tissue around a sensitive nerve ending. Previous research suggests the layers, or ‘lamellae’, of tissue wrapped up in the inner and outer cores here push against the nerve ending when we experience transient touch or vibrations. Now researchers find that, instead, the outer core (looking like cornflakes here, but 1000 times smaller) acts to protect the nerve, while the inner core of lamellar Schwann cells act as additional touch receptors, helping to the nerve to respond to different patterns of touch. Insights from this Pc, actually from inside a duck’s beak, may help us to understand the subtleties of human proprioception [sense of our body's position].

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Video from work by Luke H. Ziolkowski and Yury A. Nikolaev and colleagues
• Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
• Published in Science Advances, February 2025