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Related Concept Videos

Perception

Perception

Perception is a fundamental psychological process that enables individuals to organize, interpret, and consciously experience sensory information. This process is crucial for understanding and interacting with the world around us. It includes both bottom-up and top-down processing, each playing a distinct role in how we perceive our environment.
Bottom-up processing begins at the sensory level, where receptors detect external environmental stimuli. These could include the tactile sensation of...

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...

What is a Sensory System?

What is a Sensory System?

Sensory systems detect stimuli—such as light and sound waves—and transduce them into neural signals that can be interpreted by the nervous system. In addition to external stimuli detected by the senses, some sensory systems detect internal stimuli—such as the proprioceptors in muscles and tendons that send feedback about limb position.

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.

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.

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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 9, 2026

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

Sensory processing: who's in (top-down) control?

Christian C Ruff¹

¹Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research (SNS Lab), Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland. christian.ruff@uzh.ch

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

|August 6, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The brain uses top-down modulation to prioritize relevant information for processing, influencing sensory cortex for adaptive behavior. This mechanism enhances neural signals for both external stimuli and internal thoughts.

Keywords:

frontal eye fields parietal cortex selective attention short-term memory top-down

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Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Neurobiology

Background:

Jon Driver's research focused on how the brain selects relevant stimuli.
Selective attention models emphasize top-down modulation of sensory cortex for behavioral control.

Purpose of the Study:

To review research on the characteristics and neural origins of top-down modulations.
To explore how the brain prioritizes behaviorally relevant information.

Main Methods:

Review of studies on top-down modulations in sensory cortical areas.
Analysis of feedback projections from frontal and parietal brain regions.

Main Results:

Neural processing in sensory cortex is biased towards relevant stimuli and thoughts.
Feedback projections from frontal and parietal areas mediate these biases.
Similar modulatory influences are observed in attention, imagery, and short-term memory.

Conclusions:

Top-down modulations enhance sensory processing of relevant neural signals.
Common neural mechanisms may underlie processing of external and internal information.
Future research, inspired by Jon Driver's work, will explore motivational system guidance.