By Gabriel Robles-De-La-Torre, PhD

Touch and related capabilities such as kinesthesia (see the previous topic) are probably the most underrated human abilities. However, they are critical for normal human functioning. Why, one may wonder, are these capabilities so important and so underrated?

Simply put, what the sense of touch and related capabilities do is very subtle. Normally, these capabilities operate effortlessly and without our conscious awareness of most of what they do.

We can gain essential insights about these capabilities by knowing what happens when they are lost. How would it be like losing one's sense of touch? This, although rare, can happen. The immediate results are unexpectedly catastrophic: it is virtually impossible to walk, or even to stand upright. It is impossible to skillfully handle objects such as tools. But such terrible deficits go beyond controlling one's body. It also becomes difficult to understand the actions of other people (see Further Reading). 

Most of us have had a very superficial glimpse of what loss of touch does. For example, when a leg "falls asleep", it becomes difficult to walk. Or, after local dental anesthesia, we are temporarily unable to speak normally (see Further Reading).

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Further reading

Robles-De-La-Torre G. "The Importance of the Sense of Touch in Virtual and Real Environments". IEEE Multimedia 13(3), Special issue on Haptic User Interfaces for Multimedia Systems, pp. 24-30. (2006)

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Robles-De-La-Torre G. "Virtual Reality: Touch / Haptics". In Goldstein B (Ed.), "SAGE Encyclopedia of Perception". Sage Publications,Thousand Oaks, CA (2009).