Our face, hands, and fingertips are richly innervated, meaning they’re filled with tiny nerves and nerve endings that need to receive sensory information from touch in order for us to perform fine motor functions. Each of those nerve fibers is like an electric cable or telephone wire, engineered to carry different types of information between our brains and the rest of our bodies.⁠ ⁠ A body part like the fingertip is like Manhattan – filled with crisscrossing wires and cables for a dense population. Even a small event in Manhattan could disrupt electric or telephone service for many people. But our backs are more like a desolate area of Kansas, where a car could hit a telephone pole and affect service for only a few residents.⁠ ⁠ _____⁠ ⁠ That’s why the pain of common paper cuts is so exquisite – a paper cut on your finger, lips, or tongue is cutting through many more nerve endings and lighting up more pain receptors than it might on your back.⁠ ⁠ Those densely innervated areas of the ...