The threshold of two points discrimination about touch sensation on the surface of human body shows the minimum at the tip of the tongue, and neither at the back nor margin of the tongue.
Generally speaking, the condition necessary for two points discrimination is the separa-tion of two sensory circles, so that the threshold depends primarily upon the extent of condensation of touch spots distribution.
The author made an experiment on the distribution of the touch spots on the tongue of the toad, taking, as the index, the action currents of the glossopharyngeal nerve which are initiated when a very small area of the tongue surface is stimulated.
The toad is kept in the back position, and the action currents are led off by a pair of silver wire electrodes, connected to a Braun tube through a R. C. coupled amplifier.
The tongue is flatly fixed with a pin outside the mouth. Touch stimulation is given by closing the circuit of an electro-magnet, to the movable iron piece of which a pin of about 0.2 mm diameter is fixed.
Thus twenty-five points in 1 mm2 of the tongue surface, were stimulated by using a manipulator for adjusting the stimulating pin at every 0.25 mm distance.
Stimulation was repeated three times at every point, and the points which gave impules in every stimulation were considered to have a touch spot.
As a consequence, touch spots could be found in 12 out of 25 points on average in all of the above-mentioned three regions of the tongue, and not particulary abandunt on the tip.
Therefore, if the condition is the same on the human tongue, the deciding factors of the threshold of two points discrimination are not to be found in the condensed distribution of touch spots but in some differences in physical conditions of the tongue surface and also in the polyinnervation of the nervous system for the receptors (Meissner's corpuscle) .
The central nervous system and psychological factors may be concerned, too.
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