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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...

Somatosensation

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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.

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.

Association Areas of the Cortex

Association Areas of the Cortex

Association areas are regions of the cerebral cortex that do not have a specific sensory or motor function. Instead, they integrate and interpret information from various sources to enable higher cognitive processes such as memory, learning, and decision-making. Some key association areas include the following:
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Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

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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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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...

Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways

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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 dorsal...

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A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

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A pure salience response in posterior parietal cortex.

Fabrice Arcizet¹, Koorosh Mirpour, James W Bisley

¹Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. farcizet@mednet.ucla.edu

Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)

|March 23, 2011

Summary

The lateral intraparietal area (LIP) shows rapid responses to visually salient stimuli, independent of specific features. This suggests LIP contributes to a priority map guiding attention and eye movements.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Visual Perception
Cognitive Science

Background:

Visual attention models incorporate bottom-up salience.
The lateral intraparietal area (LIP) is hypothesized to be a priority map.
Top-down influences on LIP are well-documented, but pure salience responses are not.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if LIP neurons exhibit a pure salience response to stimuli defined by static features alone.
To determine the timing and characteristics of LIP responses to salient visual stimuli.

Main Methods:

Recorded LIP neuronal activity in response to colored salient stimuli and distractors during a passive fixation task.
Compared neuronal responses to stimuli differing in static features.

Main Results:

Many LIP neurons showed preferential responses to one of two colored stimuli.
Mean responses to salient stimuli were significantly higher than to distractors, irrespective of stimulus features.
Enhanced responses occurred within 75 ms, with correlated responses suggesting gain control.

Conclusions:

A pure salience signal rapidly emerges in LIP by integrating signals from earlier visual areas.
LIP contributes to the formation of a priority map essential for guiding attention and saccades.