touch (redirected from touching)

touch (tuch)

1. the sense by which contact with objects gives evidence as to certain of their qualities.

2. palpation with the finger.

---

therapeutic touch  (TT) a healing method based on the premise that the body possesses an energy field that can be affected by the focused intention of the healer. The practitioner uses the hands to assess the patient's energy field, to release areas where the free flow of energy is blocked, and to balance the patient's energy, by transferring energy from a universal life energy force to the patient.

---

touch (tch)

n.

1. The physiological sense by which external objects or forces are perceived through contact with the body.

2. Digital examination.

---

touch·a·ble adj.

---

touch,

n the sense by which contact with an object provides evidence of its properties.

touch, light,

n tactile sense. The principal organs of light touch are Meissner's corpuscles, which are large and oval. Each capsule receives several nerve fibers that shed their myelin sheaths and coil into a spiral complex network. Associated with Meissner's corpuscles in the perception of light touch are both Merkel's disks and a basketlike arrangement of nerve fibers around the hair follicles.

---

touch

1. the sense by which contact of an object with the skin is recognized.

2. palpation with the finger.

Touch is actually not a single sense, but several. There are separate nerves in the skin to register heat, cold, pressure, pain and touch. These thousands of nerves are distributed unevenly over the body, so that some areas are more responsive to cold, others to pain, and others to heat or pressure.

Each of these types of nerves has a different structure at the receiving end. A touch nerve has an elongated bulb-shaped end, and a nerve responsive to cold a squat bulb; the nerve that registers warmth has what looks like twisted threads, and the nerve for deep pressure has an egg-shaped end. Pain receptors have no protective sheath.

---

touch receptors

see sense.