The coarse mental map of the breast is anchored on the nipple

• DOI: 10.7554/elife.105946
• Publication Date: 2025-04-08T15:37:52Z
• Authors: Katie H Long; Emily E Fitzgerald; Ev I Berger-Wolf; Amani Fawaz; Stacy Tessler Lindau; Sliman J Bensmaia; Charles M Greenspon

Touch plays a key role in our perception of body and shapes interactions with the world, from objects we manipulate to people touch. While tactile sensibility hand has been extensively characterized, much less is known about touch on other parts body. Despite important breast lactation as well affective sexual touch, relatively little its sensory properties. To fill this gap, investigated spatial acuity compared it that back, regions span range acuity. First, found was even lower than heretofore paragon poor Second, for larger breasts, consistent hypothesis innervation capacity does not scale size. Third, touches different nipple were largely indistinguishable, suggesting unit. Fourth, localization errors systematically biased toward more so at greater distances breast.