The article I read was related towards neuroscience, it was about studies done on fingerprints. The article talk about new studies done that went into detail of the actual structure of the ridges on a finger tip can enhance the sense of touch. To this day scientist aren’t entirely sure for the purpose o all the ridges on our fingertips, but others speculate that they are for grip, and some speculate that they are evolved in such a way to identify a person. A group of French scientist in Paris conducted a series of experiments with a highly developed sensor which was designed to mimic a finger print. They found that particular ridges in the fingerprints help amplify vibrations in different frequency ranges which help stimulate receptor in the skin that are important for texture perception, leading them to believe that texture information plays a huge role in our ability to identify objects just by the touch.
The scientist used two artificial finger tips, one was smooth and rubber the other artificial fingertip used in the experiment was made of a rubber like material close to the skins texture and had a dome shape. The finger print on the sensor contained parallel lines similar to that of a humans fingerprint. Both fingertips were slid across a glass surface, the one with parallel ridges picked up vibrations about a hundred times stronger opposed to the smooth fingertip. They later on discover in the study that parallel ridges have the highest frequency and leave the question of why do humans have slightly open swirls on their fingertips and some monkeys have parallel ridges. It could be an evolutionary upgrade in humans or maybe monkeys search for different feelings when exploring surfaces. This new study can one day lead to improved prosthetic hands.
Citation
Miller, Greg. "Fingerprints Enhance the Sense of Touch". AAAS. 2/12/2009
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