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Related Concept Videos

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System01:11

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:
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...
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Somatosensation01:33

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.
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What is a Sensory System?01:31

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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.
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Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex01:23

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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...
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Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways01:29

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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.
The somatosensory system is divided into three main pathways: the dorsal (or posterior) column-medial lemniscus, spinothalamic (or anterolateral), and spinocerebellar pathways.
The dorsal...
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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.
Motor Areas
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 2, 2026

Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator TSPAS
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Tactile sensory system: encoding from the periphery to the cortex.

Lynette A Jones1, Allan M Smith

  • 1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Systems Biology and Medicine
|March 21, 2014
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Skin mechanoreceptors are crucial for touch perception and sensorimotor control. Research highlights the role of shear forces in active touch, revealing fingertip sensitivity during object manipulation and exploration.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Sensory Physiology

Background:

  • Specialized skin mechanoreceptors form the basis of the tactile sensory system.
  • The relationship between mechanoreceptor morphology and physiological responses remains unclear.
  • Existing models struggle to explain varied responses of tactile afferents to natural stimuli.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the link between cutaneous receptor morphology and physiological responses.
  • To evaluate neural codes for predicting human tactile perception.
  • To understand the dual role of skin sensory signals in perception and sensorimotor control.

Main Methods:

  • Neurophysiological experiments.
  • Psychophysical experiments.
  • Analysis of neural codes from afferent signals.

Main Results:

  • All tactile afferent units respond to various natural stimuli, challenging labelled-line models.
  • Neural codes can predict human perceptual performance.
  • Active touch perception differs from passive stimulation due to self-generated exploration.

Conclusions:

  • Shear forces are critical in active touch and exploratory movements.
  • Fingertip skin exhibits high sensitivity to shear forces during manipulation and exploration.
  • Further research is needed to fully model the tactile sensory system's complexity.