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Related Concept Videos

Somatosensation01:33

Somatosensation

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The somatosensory system relays sensory information from the skin, mucous membranes, limbs, and joints. Somatosensation is more familiarly known as the sense of touch. A typical somatosensory pathway includes three types of long neurons: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary neurons have cell bodies located near the spinal cord in groups of neurons called dorsal root ganglia. The sensory neurons of ganglia innervate designated areas of skin called dermatomes.
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Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex01:14

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The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
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Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways01:29

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Somatic sensory or somatosensory pathways refer to the neural pathways that carry information related to touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and proprioception from the skin, muscles, tendons, and joints to the brain. These pathways involve several stages of processing and integration of sensory information.
The somatosensory system is divided into three main pathways: the dorsal (or posterior) column-medial lemniscus, spinothalamic (or anterolateral), and spinocerebellar pathways.
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Major Somatic Sensory Pathways01:28

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Sensory impulses related to touch, pressure, vibration, and proprioception from various body parts, such as the limbs, trunk, neck, and posterior head, travel to the cerebral cortex through the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway. The pathway’s name derives from the two white-matter tracts that convey the impulses: the spinal cord's posterior column and the brainstem's medial lemniscus. First-order sensory neurons extend their axons into the spinal cord, forming the...
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Hierarchy of Motor Control01:18

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The hierarchy of motor control refers to the different levels of organization and processing involved in controlling movement in the body. These levels range from higher cortical areas involved in planning and decision-making to lower spinal cord reflexes that respond automatically to external stimuli.
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Introduction to Special Senses01:26

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Sensory receptors play an integral part in comprehending our external and internal environments. They receive diverse stimuli, converting them into the nervous system's electrochemical signals. This conversion occurs as the stimulus alters the sensory neuron's cell membrane potential, instigating the generation of an action potential. This action potential is subsequently transmitted to the central nervous system (CNS), which integrates with other sensory data or higher cognitive...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 5, 2026

A Method for Evaluating Timeliness and Accuracy of Volitional Motor Responses to Vibrotactile Stimuli
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A sensory source for motor variation.

Leslie C Osborne1, Stephen G Lisberger, William Bialek

  • 1Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology, W. M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0444, USA. osborne@phy.ucsf.edu

Nature
|September 16, 2005
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Movement variability stems from sensory estimation errors, not motor noise or intention fluctuations. Optimal performance relies on accurate sensory input for precise motor output, as seen in primate eye movements.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Motor Control
  • Sensory Perception

Background:

  • Movement variability is often attributed to internal noise in the motor system or cognitive processes.
  • An alternative hypothesis suggests variability arises from inaccuracies in sensory estimations of external parameters crucial for action.
  • Understanding the source of variability is key to optimizing motor performance, especially in precision-demanding tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether sensory estimation errors are the primary cause of variability in visually guided smooth-pursuit eye movements.
  • To test the hypothesis that motor output accuracy is limited by sensory input quality, with no additional noise introduced during planning and execution.
  • To compare the magnitude of inferred sensory errors with perceptual discrimination thresholds.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized visually guided smooth-pursuit eye movements in primates as an experimental model.
  • Presented identical target motions repeatedly to analyze eye trajectory variations.
  • Quantified the variance in eye movements and attributed it to specific sensory estimation errors (speed, direction, timing) and background noise.

Main Results:

  • Nearly 92% of the variance in eye trajectory was explained by errors in sensory estimates of target motion parameters (speed, direction, timing).
  • A small amount of background noise was observed during both eye movements and fixations.
  • The estimated magnitudes of sensory errors correlated with established sensory discrimination thresholds.

Conclusions:

  • Sensory estimation errors, rather than motor system noise or intention variability, are the dominant source of movement variability in this task.
  • Motor system performance is optimized when it accurately reflects the quality of sensory information.
  • Neural processes underlying perception and action share common noise limitations, suggesting integrated sensory-motor processing.