Ruffini endings are primarily associated with which function?

• A. Cold sensation
• B. Temperature change
• C. Skin stretch
• D. Fine touch

Answer: (C)

Ruffini endings are slow-adapting mechanoreceptors that primarily detect skin stretch. They respond to sustained stretch and tangential forces, providing information about hand shape, object manipulation, and joint position as you grip or move something. Their large receptive fields give a sense of overall stretch rather than fine detail, which is why they contribute to proprioception and the sense of grip rather than to detecting temperature or fine textures.

Temperature changes and cold sensation are handled by thermoreceptors, not Ruffini endings, and fine touch is more associated with other receptors like Merkel discs and Meissner corpuscles.