Sensory innervation

Cutaneous innervation refers to the area of the skin which is supplied by a specific cutaneous nerve.

Dermatomes are similar; however, a dermatome only specifies the area served by a spinal nerve. In some cases, the dermatome is less specific (when a spinal nerve is the source for more than one cutaneous nerve), and in other cases it is more specific (when a cutaneous nerve is derived from multiple spinal nerves.)

Modern texts are in agreement about which areas of the skin are served by which nerves, but there are minor variations in some of the details. The borders designated by the diagrams in the 1918 edition of Gray's Anatomy are similar, but not identical, to those generally accepted today. The concept of autonomous territory and the concept of maximal territory of cutaneous distribution for every cutaneous branch are immensely useful to clinicians assessing patients with neurological disorders.

The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is divided into the somatic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, and the enteric nervous system. However, it is the somatic nervous system, responsible for body movement and the reception of external stimuli, which allows one to understand how cutaneous innervation is made possible by the action of specific sensory fibers located on the skin, as well as the distinct pathways they take to the central nervous system. The skin, which is part of the integumentary system, plays an important role in the somatic nervous system because it contains a range of nerve endings that react to heat and cold, touch, pressure, vibration, and tissue injury.

The central nervous system (CNS) works with the peripheral nervous system in cutaneous innervation. The CNS is responsible for processing the information it receives from the cutaneous nerves that detect a given stimulus, and then identifying the kind of sensory inputs which project to a specific region of the primary somatosensory cortex.

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