Human brains are capable of detecting the location of touch even when it's not directly on the body, new research shows.

An intriguing new study indicates that people can sense how an object they're holding comes into contact with something else - almost as if it were an extension of oneself.

If you're holding a stick that you then use to tap something else, for example, the brain appears to activate a special set of neural sensors to work out what just happened using the vibration patterns as they're sent through our nervous system.

Of course if something you're holding is touched, you can feel the shift in pressure as it's passed on to our fingers – but this latest study shows how you can also figure out the exact location of the contact on the object.

"The tool is being treated like a sensory extension of your body," neuroscientist Luke Miller, from the University of Lyon in France, told Richard Sima at Scientific American.