Women have a more sensitive touch than men, but not because of their gender. It鈥檚 just that their fingers tend to be smaller.
鈥淲e now understand that this sex difference is not actually a 鈥榮ex effect鈥�, but rather an effect of finger size,鈥� says of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
His team measured the surface areas of index fingers in 100 students and then asked them to feel surfaces marked with progressively finer grooves.
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Dense receptors
When the grooves get too narrow for someone鈥檚 sense of touch, the surface feels smooth. On average, men could detect grooves down to 1.59聽millimetres wide, whereas women detected grooves at 1.41聽millimetres.
But what mattered was finger size, not gender. Spatial discrimination fell by 0.25聽millimetres for every square-centimetre increase in finger area.
The team found that sweat pores become more densely packed as finger size decreases. They suspect that the skin鈥檚 touch receptors, or Merkel cells, are also more tightly packed, which might explain why small fingers are more sensitive.
Journal reference: , DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.3684-09.2009
