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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.
Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System01:11

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

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:
The receptor level:
The receptor level is the first stage of sensation. It involves the detection of a stimulus by specialized sensory receptors. The stimulus must arrive within the receptor's receptive field. Next, the receptor converts the energy of the stimulus...
Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex01:23

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

The somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobes is crucial for interpreting sensory data such as touch, temperature, and proprioception. The somatosensory cortex, situated in the parietal lobes, plays a vital role in interpreting sensory information like touch, temperature, and proprioception—awareness of body position. This specialized brain region features an organized structure wherein neurons at the top primarily process sensations originating from the lower body. In contrast, those at the...
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...
Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways01:29

Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways

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.
The dorsal...
Incomplete Dominance01:43

Incomplete Dominance

Gregor Mendel's work (1822 - 1884) was primarily focused on pea plants. Through his initial experiments, he determined that every gene in a diploid cell has two variants called alleles inherited from each parent. He suggested that amongst these two alleles, one allele is dominant in character and the other recessive. The combination of alleles determines the phenotype of a gene in an organism.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator (TSPAS)
04:40

Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator (TSPAS)

Published on: July 30, 2020

Somatotopic dominance in tactile temporal processing.

Shinobu Kuroki1, Junji Watanabe, Naoki Kawakami

  • 1Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. Shinobu_Kuroki@ipc.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Experimental Brain Research
|March 20, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Human touch processing relies on how the brain interprets tactile signals. This study shows that judgments of timing between touch events are mainly influenced by the body

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Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator (TSPAS)
04:40

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Published on: July 30, 2020

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms
08:05

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms

Published on: February 10, 2016

Quantitative Assessment of Cortical Auditory-tactile Processing in Children with Disabilities
09:38

Quantitative Assessment of Cortical Auditory-tactile Processing in Children with Disabilities

Published on: January 29, 2014

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Sensory Perception
  • Human Psychophysics

Background:

  • The sense of touch involves peripheral mechanoreceptor activation and central cortical processing.
  • Understanding tactile central processing is crucial for explaining how we perceive touch.
  • Temporal judgments of tactile events require integrating spatially separated sensory inputs.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how spatial separation influences human judgments of temporal relationships between two tactile events.
  • To examine the impact of somatotopic and spatiotopic coordinates on tactile temporal judgments.
  • To differentiate the roles of cortical topography versus environmental spatial representation in tactile timing.

Main Methods:

  • Psychophysical study of human participants performing four types of two-point temporal judgments: simultaneity, temporal order, apparent motion, and inter-stimulus interval.
  • Manipulation of somatotopic distance by stimulating different fingers on the same or different hands (ipsilateral vs. bilateral).
  • Manipulation of spatiotopic distance by varying stimulator separation under bilateral conditions (bilateral-near vs. bilateral-far).

Main Results:

  • All four tactile temporal judgment tasks were significantly affected by somatotopic distance.
  • Spatiotopic distance had only a slight effect on the temporal judgment tasks.
  • Tactile temporal judgments across various time scales (milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds) are primarily driven by somatotopic representation.

Conclusions:

  • Tactile temporal judgments are predominantly influenced by the somatotopic (cortical) representation of space.
  • Spatiotopic (environmental) spatial information plays a minimal role in these temporal perception tasks.
  • The findings suggest that central tactile processing prioritizes somatotopic mapping for temporal judgments unless spatial constraints are severe.