MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
If I take a pin, and stick it in my arm, I can feel it, exactly where I'm sticking it in.
If I then stick the pin in a different place on my arm, I can also feel exactly where it is.
Now I know I don't have a nerve on every square pinpoint of skin because then I'd have seventeen trillion nerves just in my skin alone, so how's that work then?
Ta.
steep away from knife drawer.
try it on the tip of your elbow - I can't feel it there 🙂
However, in answer to your question, I should think each pain sensor covers a few sq. mm of skin, or may even slightly overlap enabling your brain to interpolate several nerves to refine the resolution.
FYI you can get help if you find yourself self harming...
Elbow is fine. I've been experimenting. Legs aren't so good. Knob is very sensitive. ditto testicles.
I like the idea of overlapping pressure zones and some sort of correllation in my head but I'm still struggling to understand how that works. Are nerves quite big then?
Oops: Silence is golden. Brains are weird.
It isn't brains that are weird, it's people who stick pins in their nob & scrote that are weird
Quiet night in the Hotel?
[img] 
[/img]
if the pain sensors end in a web of fine filaments, as shown here, they may interleave, so your brain could correlate the relative intensity of pain from several nearby sensors to pinpoint (literally in your case) the site 🙂
if you run a pencil slowly over the skin of your arm it will feel colder in some places more than others. The cold points are where the nerves are.
can you still do it with your eyes closed? Vision may be complementing your nerves. Its normally just your finger tips and other touch sensitive areas that can differetiate isn't it?
Stop making out it's just me. I'm no different to you lot. Freaking weirdo's the lot of you. I ask you... A proper question, not shite about governments and computers which generate a hilarious amount of ridiculous answers but a serious question about skin and what do I get?
Simon F Barnes produces the best answer, what is the world coming to?