aesthesia

Aesthesia is the faculty or capacity for sensory perception, derived from the Greek aisthēsis, meaning perception or sensation. In medical usage, aesthesia is often seen as the basis for describing sensory function or dysfunction, and the suffix -aesthesia is attached to roots to denote a particular sensory phenomenon.

Common terms include hyperesthesia (heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli), hypoesthesia (reduced sense of touch or other sensations), and anesthesia (loss of sensation, due either to injury or to pharmacological anesthesia). Paresthesia denotes abnormal sensations such as tingling, pricking, or creeping skin sensations without obvious stimulus. Allesthesia is a mislocalization of a sensory response, where a stimulus is perceived at a different site than its origin.

In clinical practice, clinicians assess sensory function by testing modalities such as light touch, pinprick, vibration, temperature, and proprioception, to determine thresholds and distributions of sensation. Aesthesia also appears in neurological descriptions of deafferentation or neuropathies, where sensory pathways are damaged, leading to altered or absent sensation.

In philosophy and older medical texts, aesthesia can refer more broadly to the experience of sensing and perceiving, sometimes in contrast with cognition or action; it is related etymologically to aesthetics, but is not identical to aesthetic judgments.