Receptive Fields
A mechanoreceptor's receptive field is the area within which a stimulus can excite the cell. If the skin is touched in two separate points within a single receptive field, the person will be unable to feel the two separate points. If the two points touched span more than a single receptive field then both will be felt. The size of mechanoreceptors' receptive fields in a given area determines the degree to which detailed stimuli can be resolved: the smaller and more densely clustered the receptive fields, the higher the resolution. For this reason, Merkel nerve endings and Meissner's corpuscles are most densely clustered in the highly sensitive finger tips, and less so in the palms.
Merkel Discs have small receptive fields which allow for them to detect fine spatial separation. They also have two point discrimination.
Read more about this topic: Merkel Nerve Ending
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