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Related Concept Videos

Somatosensation01:33

Somatosensation

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.
Tactile and Chemical Senses01:27

Tactile and Chemical Senses

Tactile senses encompass touch, temperature, and pain, each mediated by specific receptors. Touch receptors detect mechanical energy or pressure against the skin. Sensory fibers from these receptors enter the spinal cord and relay information to the brain stem. Here, most fibers cross over to the opposite side of the brain. The touch information then moves to the thalamus, which projects a map of the body's surface onto the somatosensory areas of the parietal lobes in the cerebral cortex. This...
Vision01:24

Vision

Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.
Introduction to Special Senses01:26

Introduction to Special Senses

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 functions.
Design Example: Resistive Touchscreen01:14

Design Example: Resistive Touchscreen

A device engineer plays a crucial role in designing user interfaces for mobile devices. One such interface is the resistive touchscreen, which fundamentally consists of two metallic layers: a flexible upper layer and a rigid lower layer, separated by a narrow gap. The high resistance between these two layers is a key characteristic of this design.
When a user touches the screen, the two layers make contact at a specific point known as the touchpoint. This contact reduces the resistance between...
Visual System01:26

Visual System

Light enters the eye through the cornea, a transparent, dome-shaped surface covering the surface of the eyeball that helps to direct and focus incoming light. This light is then channeled toward the pupil, an adjustable opening whose size is controlled by the iris. The iris, a pigmented muscle, regulates the amount of light entering the eye by contracting or dilating the pupil, thereby ensuring optimal light levels for clear vision.
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback
05:43

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback

Published on: May 23, 2019

Analogous intermediate shape coding in vision and touch.

Jeffrey M Yau1, Anitha Pasupathy, Paul J Fitzgerald

  • 1Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute and Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|October 7, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The brain processes object shapes similarly using both vision and touch. Neurons in visual and somatosensory areas show parallel tuning for curvature, suggesting analogous shape coding mechanisms.

More Related Videos

Visualizing Visual Adaptation
04:43

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Published on: April 24, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback
05:43

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback

Published on: May 23, 2019

Visualizing Visual Adaptation
04:43

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Published on: April 24, 2017

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Sensory processing
  • Computational neuroscience

Background:

  • Humans perceive object shape through both visual and tactile senses.
  • The brain may use similar neural representations for shape across different sensory modalities.
  • Understanding cross-modal shape coding is crucial for insights into sensory integration.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether intermediate visual (V4) and somatosensory (SII) cortical areas in macaques exhibit analogous shape-encoding mechanisms.
  • To compare neural responses to matched shape stimuli across vision and touch.
  • To determine if shape processing in these areas is characterized by similar tuning properties.

Main Methods:

  • Electrophysiological recordings from single neurons in macaque monkey areas V4 and SII.
  • Presentation of precisely matched visual and tactile shape stimuli.
  • Analysis of neuronal tuning properties, specifically sensitivity to curvature direction.

Main Results:

  • Neurons in both area V4 (visual) and area SII (somatosensory) demonstrated significant shape sensitivity.
  • A parallel pattern of tuning for curvature direction was observed in both sensory areas.
  • These findings indicate similar computational principles for shape representation in visual and somatosensory cortex.

Conclusions:

  • The intermediate visual and somatosensory cortices employ analogous mechanisms for coding object shape.
  • Parallel tuning for curvature direction suggests shared neural strategies for shape perception.
  • These findings support the hypothesis of unified or highly similar shape representations across sensory modalities.