What is the significance of goosebumps

In animals with a thick hair coat this rising of hair expands the layer of air that serves as insulation. The thicker the hair layer, the more heat is retained. In people this reaction is useless because we do not have a hair coat, but goosebumps persist nevertheless.

In addition to cold, the hair will also stand up in many animals when they feel threatened--in a cat being attacked by a dog, for example. The elevated hair, together with the arched back and the sideward position the animal often assumes, makes the cat appear bigger in an attempt to make the dog back off. People also tend to experience goosebumps during emotional situations, such as walking down the aisle during their wedding, standing on a podium and listening to a national anthem after winning in sports, or even just watching horror movies on television.

Quite often a person may get goosebumps many years after a significant event, just by thinking about the emotions she once experienced, perhaps while listening to the romantic song to which she danced many years ago with the love of her life.

The reason for all these responses is the subconscious release of a stress hormone called adrenaline. Adrenaline, which in humans is produced in two small beanlike glands that sit atop the kidneys, not only causes the contraction of skin muscles but also influences many other body reactions. In animals, this hormone is released when the animal is cold or facing a stressful situation, preparing the animal for flight-or-fight reaction. Advertising Policy. You have successfully subscribed to our newsletter.

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They used two different techniques to destroy arrector pili muscle in the skin while leaving nerves and stem cells intact. Without the muscle cells, connections between the nerves and stem cells were lost, and the mice showed a delay in both stem cell activation and production of new hair. Based on these results, the researchers proposed that the muscle cells form a bridge between the nerve and the stem cells in the hair follicle.

In this way, goosebumps might play two roles: They cause hair to rise in the short term and trigger more hair growth by the stem cells in the long term.

To test this idea, the researchers compared mice exposed to either cold or normal room temperatures. The cold exposure first caused goosebumps, then boosted activity in the sympathetic nerves and an increase in norepinephrine. Mice exposed to the cold started to produce new hairs from their stem cells in less than two weeks.

Yulia Shwartz, a postdoctoral researcher in the Hsu lab who is first author of the study. Arrector pili muscle cells are often lost in the scalps of people with common baldness.