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Sensory Innervation of the Hairless and Hairy Skin in Mammals including Humans

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The Primary Afferent Neuron

Abstract

The sense of touch developed early in phylogeny. One of the reasons might be that this sense is highly essential for survival: using this sense, the newborn animal explores its new surroundings, and by doing this, it might come across sources of food and support. For this purpose the skin contains complex nervous structures, named “touch organs” or “mechanoreceptive complexes” (Halata, 1975). These organs develop at different stages before birth depending on their significance for the animal., In animals which leave their parents at an early point they are fully developed immediately after birth (Walter, 1960/61), whereas with those animals which stay with their parents for a longer period of time, the process of maturation takes longer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Abteilung für funktionelle Anatomie, Abteilung für funktionelle Anatomie der Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Zdenek Halata

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  1. Zdenek Halata
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich-Irchel, Zurich, Switzerland

    Wolfgang Zenker  & Winfried L. Neuhuber  & 

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© 1990 Plenum Press, New York

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Halata, Z. (1990). Sensory Innervation of the Hairless and Hairy Skin in Mammals including Humans. In: Zenker, W., Neuhuber, W.L. (eds) The Primary Afferent Neuron. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0579-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0579-8_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7875-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-0579-8

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