Question

Merkel’s discs, Meissner's corpuscles, are the types of
A. Touch receptor
B. Pain receptor
C. Pressure receptor
D. All of the above

Answer 1

Hint: They are responsible for the ability of an animal to respond upon contact, damaging, and distortion to stimuli by sending signals to the various body parts.

Complete step-by-step answer:
Merkel’s discs are also called Merkel’s cells or Merkel’s nerve endings. It is a type of mechanoreceptors or sensory receptors that are located below the skin or epidermis of an organism which provides information about pressure, touch, pain, and position. The Meissner’s corpuscles are also called tactile corpuscles. They are responsible for the sensational nerve impulse in response to the touch.

Additional information:
-Mechanoreceptors are the sensory cells that react to the presence of mechanical pressure.
-The mechanorece[tors work when the single is sent by the neurons through the synapses.
-Merkel’s cell is present in the layer below the hairy skin, hair follicles, etc.
-Merkel cell and Meissner’s corpuscles together will be present beneath the skin layers which will be highly sensitive.
-Meissner’s corpuscles grow till the age of 12 to 50 years and are lost gradually as the age increases.
-They will optimize when the pressure is present and acts as a transporter of sensory information.
-They store serotonin in the skin layers which respond to touch and pressure.
-There are four types of mechanoreceptors, they are:
1)Pacinian corpuscles (lamellar corpuscles)
2)Meissner’s corpuscles (tactile corpuscles)
3)Merkel nerve endings
4)Ruffini corpuscles (bulbous corpuscles)
-They are also present in the palm, forearm, fingertips, and mammary glands.
So, the correct answer is ‘All of the above’.

Note: The name Merkel’s discs was given after the name of the German anatomist Friedrich Merkel. Meissner’s corpuscles were discovered by two anatomists Georg Meissner after whom the name was given, and Rudolf Wagner. They are mostly lost during burns.