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Related Concept Videos

Somatosensation01:33

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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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The skin is the largest organ of the human body and plays a crucial role in our sensory perception. It contains a vast network of sensory receptors that contribute to the skin's protective function by perceiving physical, biological, and environmental cues and generating relevant responses.
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Sensory systems detect stimuli—such as light and sound waves—and transduce them into neural signals that can be interpreted by the nervous system. In addition to external stimuli detected by the senses, some sensory systems detect internal stimuli—such as the proprioceptors in muscles and tendons that send feedback about limb position.
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The somatosensory system is the central and peripheral nervous system component that senses and processes touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and body position or proprioception. The process of sensation takes place at three levels:
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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.
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The cutaneous sensory system.

Francis McGlone1, David Reilly

  • 1Dept of Neurological Science, University of Liverpool, Clinical Sciences Centre for Research & Education, Lower Lane, Liverpool L9 7LJ, UK. francis.mcglone@liverpool.ac.uk

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
|August 29, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The traditional four cutaneous senses may be joined by a fifth, conveying pleasant touch. This new sensory modality, mediated by specific nerve fibers, plays a crucial role in social bonding and species preservation.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Somatosensory System
  • Affective Touch

Background:

  • The cutaneous senses traditionally include touch, temperature, pain, and itch.
  • Emerging evidence suggests a fifth sensory modality responsible for pleasant touch.
  • Sensory channels are classified by discriminative (spatial, temporal) or affective (emotional) functions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review the somatosensory system and present evidence for a fifth cutaneous sensory sub-modality.
  • To distinguish between fast-conducting myelinated afferents (discriminative) and slow-conducting unmyelinated afferents (affective).
  • To propose low-threshold C-fiber mechanoreceptors as the neural basis for pleasant touch.

Main Methods:

  • Review of existing literature on somatosensory pathways.
  • Analysis of afferent fiber properties (myelinated vs. unmyelinated).
  • Comparison of low-threshold C-fiber mechanoreceptors with high-threshold C-fiber nociceptors.

Main Results:

  • Evidence supports a fifth cutaneous sensory modality conveying positive affective touch.
  • Slowly conducting unmyelinated afferents are primarily responsible for affective functions.
  • Low-threshold C-fiber mechanoreceptors are proposed as the counterpart to nociceptors in affective touch.

Conclusions:

  • The fifth sensory modality, mediated by C-fibers, conveys pleasant touch and is crucial for affiliative behaviors.
  • Both C-fiber systems (pleasant and painful touch) serve opposing affective roles but share a common mechanism for self and species preservation.
  • This expands our understanding of the somatosensory system beyond discriminative functions to include affective dimensions.