The Nobel in medicine this year goes to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their work in identifying the receptors that transduce heat and touch into signals in the nervous system.
So now you know the proximal sensors that are activated when you hug someone, or when you nibble on some ghost pepper. It’s TRPV and PIEZO channels!
Now they just have to figure out what’s going on in the central nervous system when those channels are triggered.