[1] Merkel nerve endings have a widely distributed in glabrous and hairy skin, in hair follicles, and in oral and anal mucosa.
[citation needed] Meckel nerve endings are most numerous beneath the ridges of the fingertips which make up fingerprints, and less so in the palms and forearm.
[4] In hairy skin, Merkel nerve endings are clustered into specialized epithelial structures called "touch domes" or "hair disks".
[citation needed] Merkel nerve endings provide information on pressure, position, and deep static touch features such as shapes and edges.
[citation needed] Merkel nerve endings exhibit an initial dynamic vigorous response to sustained mechanical stimulus, with a subsequent the static plateau phase of continuous lower-rate firing that may persist for more than 30 minutes.
[6] Merkel nerve endings are the most sensitive of the four main types of mechanoreceptors to vibrations at low frequencies, around 5 to 15 Hz.
Several studies indicate that type I fibres mediate high resolution tactile discrimination, and are responsible for the ability of our finger tips to feel fine detailed surface patterns (e.g. for reading Braille).