Long Katie H, Fitzgerald Emily E, Berger-Wolf Ev I, Fawaz Amani, Lindau Stacy T, Bensmaia Sliman J, Greenspon Charles M
bioRxiv. 2025 Sep 12:2022.09.14.507974. doi: 10.1101/2022.09.14.507974.
Touch plays a key role in our perception of our body and shapes our interactions with the world, from the objects we manipulate to the people we touch. While the tactile sensibility of the hand has been extensively characterized, much less is known about touch on other parts of the body. Despite the important role of the breast in lactation as well as in affective and sexual touch, relatively little is known about its sensory properties. To fill this gap, we investigated the spatial acuity of the breast and compared it to that of the hand and back, body regions that span the range of tactile spatial acuity. First, we found that the tactile acuity of the breast was even lower than that of the back, heretofore the paragon of poor acuity. Second, acuity was lower for larger breasts, consistent with the hypothesis that innervation capacity does not scale with body size. Third, touches to different regions of the nipple were largely indistinguishable, suggesting that the nipple is a sensory unit. Fourth, localization errors were systematically biased toward the nipple.
Our basic understanding of the tactile capabilities of the breast remains poorly understood in comparison to the hand or face despite the fact that the breast plays a major role in the lives of those with breasts. This paper establishes common methods for studying breast tactile sensation and presents the breast and nipple as two fundamentally discrete tactile units from the torso.
触觉在我们对身体的感知中起着关键作用，并塑造了我们与世界的互动，从我们操纵的物体到我们触摸的人。虽然手部的触觉敏感性已得到广泛研究，但对于身体其他部位的触觉了解却少得多。尽管乳房在哺乳以及情感和性接触中起着重要作用，但其感觉特性却知之甚少。为了填补这一空白，我们研究了乳房的空间敏锐度，并将其与手部和背部的空间敏锐度进行了比较，手部和背部跨越了触觉空间敏锐度的范围。首先，我们发现乳房的触觉敏锐度甚至低于背部，而背部此前一直被认为是敏锐度较差的典范。其次，乳房越大，敏锐度越低，这与神经支配能力不随身体大小而变化的假设一致。第三，对乳头不同区域的触摸在很大程度上难以区分，这表明乳头是一个感觉单元。第四，定位误差系统地偏向乳头。
尽管乳房在有乳房的人的生活中起着重要作用，但与手部或面部相比，我们对乳房触觉能力的基本了解仍然很少。本文建立了研究乳房触觉的常用方法，并将乳房和乳头呈现为躯干上两个基本不同的触觉单元。
