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Related Concept Videos

Somatosensation

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 System

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...

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

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.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex.

Tactile and Chemical Senses

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...

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

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...

Sensory Modalities

Sensory Modalities

Sensation typically is the process by which the sensory receptors and sense organs detect stimuli from the internal and external environment and transmit this information to the central nervous system for processing.
General senses refer to the broad category of sensory information detected by receptors in the body and can be further grouped into somatic and visceral senses. Somatic sensations include touch, pressure, temperature, and pain and are essential for navigating our environment and...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms

Published on: February 10, 2016

Encoding and decoding cortical representations of tactile features in the vibrissa system.

Ali-Reza Boloori¹, Robert A Jenks, Gaëlle Desbordes

¹School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience

|July 30, 2010

Summary

Rodents use facial whiskers (vibrissae) for tactile exploration. This study reveals how whisker movement velocity and contact timing shape neural activity in the rat cortex, improving our understanding of sensory perception.

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Visualization of Cortical Modules in Flattened Mammalian Cortices

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Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms

Published on: February 10, 2016

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

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

Published on: May 23, 2019

Visualization of Cortical Modules in Flattened Mammalian Cortices

Visualization of Cortical Modules in Flattened Mammalian Cortices

Published on: January 22, 2018

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Sensory Processing
Computational Biology

Background:

Rodents utilize facial vibrissae for active tactile exploration, generating complex sensory data.
The neural mechanisms translating vibrissal motion into cortical firing patterns and perception remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relationship between vibrissal motion dynamics and cortical neural activity.
To develop a predictive model of neural responses to tactile stimuli.

Main Methods:

Single-unit recordings from layer 4 neurons in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) of anesthetized rats.
Systematic quantification of interactions between vibrissa angular velocity and contact timing.
Formulation of a nonlinear encoding model based on joint tuning properties.

Main Results:

A significant interaction was identified between vibrissal angular velocity and contact timing on the tens of milliseconds timescale.
The developed encoding model accurately predicted neuronal firing probability and timing.
The model demonstrated predictive power for decoding tactile patterns under stimulus transformations.

Conclusions:

Neural encoding of tactile information in the rat cortex is strongly influenced by the interplay of velocity and timing.
A detailed nonlinear model can capture the sparse cortical representation of complex tactile inputs.
This work provides insights into the lower bounds of perceptual capabilities for tactile pattern recognition.