Last updated: Tue, Nov 19, 2024
Your body isn't innervated uniformly with sensory nerves. Your skin is highly innervated and includes A-beta, A-delta, and C sensory fibers. These nerves can sense light stimuli and strong stimuli. Certain other areas of the body are rich with nociceptors, primarily A-delta and C fibers. These rich areas include the periosteum (a skin-like membrane that covers your bones), the walls of your arteries, the surfaces of joints, and parts of the membrane that encloses the brain.
Visceral tissue (the contents of your chest, abdomen, and pelvis) is generally not highly innervated. Most of the sensory fibers that serve the viscera are C fibers. The intestines are so poorly innervated by sensory nerves that (so I have read) a surgeon could cut through the intestine of an unanesthetized patient without the patient objecting (assuming that the surgeon could first get through the skin and interior lining of the cavities). I believe this because my brother suffered a ruptured intestine and only knew about it after he had been admitted to the hospital with a high fever, the result of bacterial infection. On the other hand, much of the viscera is highly sensitive to inflammation and to stretching.