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None of the sensory systems is immune from the deficits in function that occur as a consequence of the natural process of aging. It is a slow process that advances throughout the life span, but does not become noticeable until the mid-40 and 50 decades of life. Most people become aware of this decline when the visual system makes it necessary to wear “reading” glasses in order to bring a printed page into proper focus. The tactile sense (touch) is not exempt from the effects of advancing age. However these effects go largely unnoticed by most people because interaction with the environment is much more salient in vision and hearing and there is no dramatic “end product” such as blindness and deafness. For this reason there has been a paucity of research funding and effort in tactile research as compared to that of vision and hearing. Although these effects have been studied for about 80 years, for the most part the early studies used poorly controlled...
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References
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Verrillo, R.T. (2008). Aging of Tactile Sense. In: Binder, M.D., Hirokawa, N., Windhorst, U. (eds) Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_131
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_131
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