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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...

Introduction to Special Senses

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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 functions.

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 Modalities

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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...

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

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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...

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

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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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Related Experiment Video

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Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity

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Sustained spatial attention in touch: modality-specific and multimodal mechanisms.

Chiara F Sambo¹, Bettina Forster

¹Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, UK. chiara.sambo@kcl.ac.uk

Thescientificworldjournal

|January 25, 2011

Summary

Sustained spatial attention enhances tactile processing in specific body areas. This review highlights how somatosensory and multimodal brain networks coordinate to manage touch-based attention.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Somatosensory Research

Background:

Sustained attention to a body location enhances tactile processing at that site.
Neural mechanisms of tactile-spatial attention involve somatosensory areas (SI, SII).
These areas are part of a larger network including multimodal regions for cross-modal spatial selection.

Purpose of the Study:

To review neural correlates of sustained spatial attention in touch.
To discuss multimodal effects in tactile-spatial attention tasks.
To explore the interplay between modality-specific and multimodal mechanisms in tactile attention.

Main Methods:

Review of existing neuroscientific studies on tactile-spatial attention.
Analysis of neuroimaging and behavioral data related to somatosensory processing.
Examination of cross-modal interactions (vision and touch) and body posture effects.

Main Results:

Modulation of activity in somatosensory areas (SI, SII) by sustained tactile-spatial attention.
Evidence for common multimodal representations mediating cross-modal attentional links between touch and vision.
Body vision influences tactile attention, with effects varying based on hand positioning (between-hand vs. within-hand).
Body posture impacts tactile attention, involving remapping of stimuli in external spatial coordinates.

Conclusions:

Sustained spatial attention in touch relies on both modality-specific (somatosensory) and multimodal (cross-modal) neural mechanisms.
These mechanisms interact to enable flexible and efficient spatial selection across sensory modalities.
Understanding these networks is crucial for comprehending sensory processing and attention.