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“Why have my fingers completely disappeared in the neighborhood?” It is a question that has been surprised by children in bathing time, teenagers in swimming lessons and adults after long hot tub sessions. Scientists once thought that these wrinkles were due to fingers that swell like a sponge after they were soaked with water. However, this theory quickly flushes away. Our figures should increase drastically in size to produce such wrinkles. Instead, the answer has more to do with our nerves than on the skin.
The secret of hairless skin
The skin on the palms of our hands and soles of our feet is unique, says Danilo del CampoA dermatologist at the Chicago Skin Clinic. It is called Glabrous skin, a name of the Latin word Glaber, which means ‘bald’. This hairless surface plays an essential role in feeling our environment. It is full of receptors that spend signals from our skin to electrical impulses that our brains can read. Enamel Is not unique for people. It is the unusual protrusions that the Sterneusmol uses to feel its environment and the upper bill of the platypus. A analysis From the bald skin in rats discovered that the ratio of fast-conducting to slow-conducting nerves was three times higher in bald skin than in hairy skin.
Clinicians first realized that the unique structure with sensor branch of the bald skin might have something to do with the wrinkled skin in a study almost a century ago, says, says, says Lauren TagliaA dermatologist at Northwestern Medicine. In a 1936 paperSir George White Pickering and Thomas Lewis reported case studies from people with polio-induced nerve damage that had remarkably wrinkled figures. Regardless of how long they spent in water, their fingers remained smooth as a marble.
These patients had damage to them median nerveWho runs down the arm and offers motor and sensory links to the hand and forearm. This nerve is an important connection In the sympathetic nervous system.
Fighting or fleeing
The Sympathetic nervous system makes our body ready for physical action. In the heart it increases the pump speed and contracting force. In the eye, the same system dilates the student, so that more light can come in. These functions are often called our “fight-of-flight” reactions. Research In the 1970s it identified that it was damage to these sympathetic compounds in the median nerve that stopped wrinkling. Dipping a hand in warm water was recognized as a valuable test for this type of nerve damage.
It was only in 2003 that A study identified how the sympathetic nervous system made fingers wrinkle. Here researchers looked at how blood flow changed the hands after immersion of water. Finger wrinkles was accompanied by a sudden fall in blood flow. This decrease was caused by the sympathetic nervous system that dressed the diameter of the blood vessels in the hand, a process called vasoconstriction.
These studies have finally mapped out how finger waves works. There was only one remaining question: why does it happen in the first place?
Get a grip on wrinkles of the finger
Scientists have arranged this question in a 2021 study. Nick DavisA researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University, organized an experiment in the British Science Museum. Davis assessed the ability of museum visitors to grab wet and dry objects. Then he asked them to immerse their hands in warm water. As soon as their fingers were wrinkled, he tested their grip again. Everyone who fought to grab a bottle of shampoo during a shower knows that picking up wet objects requires more power than dry objects. The analysis of Davis showed that wrinkled fingers more easily with wet objects grabbed wet but non -pinked fingers. “Evolutionary speaking,” says Taglia, “maybe there is an advantage for our ancestors that they can grab fishing from water bodies.” Our shadow forefathers would also have benefited from Ford streams or rivers without sliding through their wrinkles, she says.
It is a fortunate coincidence that a function of evolution millennia ago is now that diagnostic medicine benefits today. “I like to say that the skin is the window for your entire body,” concludes Del Campo.
This story is part of popular science Ask us everything seriesWhere we answer your most bizarre, stunning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Do you have something you always wanted to know? Ask us.
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