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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...

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...

Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways

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...

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways

Sensory impulses related to touch, pressure, vibration, and proprioception from various body parts, such as the limbs, trunk, neck, and posterior head, travel to the cerebral cortex through the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway. The pathway’s name derives from the two white-matter tracts that convey the impulses: the spinal cord's posterior column and the brainstem's medial lemniscus. First-order sensory neurons extend their axons into the spinal cord, forming the posterior columns...

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.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 25, 2026

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

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

Published on: January 29, 2014

Recurrent neural processing and somatosensory awareness.

Ryszard Auksztulewicz¹, Bernhard Spitzer, Felix Blankenburg

¹Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany. ryszard.auksztulewicz@gmail.com

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

|January 21, 2012

Summary

Conscious stimulus detection involves recurrent processing between brain areas. This study used dynamic causal modeling on EEG data to show that feedback loops, not just feedforward signals, are crucial for tactile awareness.

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

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Science
Sensory Processing

Background:

The neural basis of conscious perception remains a key question in neuroscience.
The recurrent processing hypothesis suggests conscious awareness requires feedback loops between brain regions.
Previous research has primarily focused on visual stimuli, leaving tactile awareness less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of recurrent processing in tactile stimulus detection.
To test the recurrent processing hypothesis in the somatosensory system.
To differentiate between feedforward, feedback, and recurrent models of tactile perception.

Main Methods:

Applied dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to electroencephalography (EEG) data.
Analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) from a human somatosensory detection task.
Utilized Bayesian model comparison to evaluate different processing models.

Main Results:

Recurrent processing models provided a better explanation for later EEG components compared to feedforward models.
Stimulus detection showed an increased feedforward connection strength from primary to secondary somatosensory cortex around 80 ms.
A detection-related increase in feedback connection strength was observed at later latencies (>140 ms).

Conclusions:

Findings support the recurrent processing hypothesis for tactile awareness.
Conscious tactile stimulus detection involves enhanced recurrent interactions within the somatosensory network.
Increased feedback connectivity plays a significant role in later stages of tactile sensory processing.