--- title: Little fingers are more sensitive description: Smaller fingers may create a more precise sense of touch, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience. Anecdotally, researchers have... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7144947/little-fingers-are-more-sensitive/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2009-12-16T20:29:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-06-10T11:48:36.002Z article:section: Health og:title: Little fingers are more sensitive og:description: Smaller fingers may create a more precise sense of touch, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience. Anecdotally, researchers have... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7144947/little-fingers-are-more-sensitive/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Little fingers are more sensitive twitter:description: Smaller fingers may create a more precise sense of touch, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience. Anecdotally, researchers have... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Health](/section/health/) # Little fingers are more sensitive > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 16, 2009 8:29 PM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 16, 2009 8:29 PM UTC  Li Na of China prepares to receive a serve from Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia during their women's singles final match at the Australian Open 2014 tennis tournament in Melbourne Jan. 25, 2014 Petar Kujundzic / Reuters Smaller fingers may create a more precise sense of touch, according to a study published this week in the _Journal of Neuroscience_. Anecdotally, researchers have observed that women tend to have a finer sense of touch than men, but until now it wasn’t very clear why. This new research suggests that it may just have to do with their generally tinier fingertips—smaller fingers are more sensitive because of amore denser concentration of sensory receptors, they conclude. more Researchers recruited 100 university students and measured the size of their index fingers. They then asked participants to complete tests designed to measure sensitivity to touch—pushing their fingertips against surfaces that had a series of increasingly narrow grooves. They found that, regardless of gender, the smaller the fingertips, the finer the sense of touch. Littler fingertips are likely more sensitive because of the distribution of sensory receptors—the less surface area to spread out across, the closer together the receptors are. While previous research has shown that this is the case for sensory receptors that pick up on vibration, this new study suggests that this may also be true for Merkel receptors, which read stationary, tactile information—such as the width of grooves pressed down upon by a finger. To measure the density of Merkel receptors, researchers analyzed placement of sweat pores on participants fingers, where Merkel receptors tend to cluster. What they found confirmed their suspicions—sweat pores (and Merkel receptors) were concentrated more densely among participants who had smaller (and more sensitive) fingertips. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7144947/little-fingers-are-more-sensitive/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7144947/little-fingers-are-more-sensitive/"},"headline":"Little fingers are more sensitive","datePublished":"2009-12-16T20:29:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-06-10T11:48:36.002Z","description":"Smaller fingers may create a more precise sense of touch, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience. 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