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Related Concept Videos

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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Design Example: Resistive Touchscreen01:14

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A device engineer plays a crucial role in designing user interfaces for mobile devices. One such interface is the resistive touchscreen, which fundamentally consists of two metallic layers: a flexible upper layer and a rigid lower layer, separated by a narrow gap. The high resistance between these two layers is a key characteristic of this design.
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Tactile and Chemical Senses01:27

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Tactile senses encompass touch, temperature, and pain, each mediated by specific receptors. Touch receptors detect mechanical energy or pressure against the skin. Sensory fibers from these receptors enter the spinal cord and relay information to the brain stem. Here, most fibers cross over to the opposite side of the brain. The touch information then moves to the thalamus, which projects a map of the body's surface onto the somatosensory areas of the parietal lobes in the cerebral cortex.
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Major Somatic Sensory Pathways01:28

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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...
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Surface Tension and Surface Energy01:16

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When a paint brush is immersed in water, the bristles wave freely inside the water. When it is taken out, the bristles stick together. The reason behind this effect is surface tension.
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Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System01:11

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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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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms
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Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms

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Coincidence avoidance principle in surface haptic interpretation.

Steven G Manuel1, Roberta L Klatzky2, Michael A Peshkin1

  • 1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; and.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|February 13, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The brain integrates force sensations from two fingertips into a single perception when the stimuli align spatially. This suggests the brain prioritizes structural interpretation to minimize coincidental alignments.

Keywords:
bumpskinestheticperceptionsurface haptictouch

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Human Perception
  • Haptics

Background:

  • The brain's ability to integrate or segregate sensory input is crucial for accurate environmental interaction.
  • Understanding how combined tactile sensations are processed remains a key question in sensory neuroscience.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how the brain interprets combined force sensations applied to two separate fingertips.
  • To determine the conditions under which multiple tactile stimuli are perceived as unified or distinct.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a custom force-feedback device to deliver illusory virtual bumps to the index finger and thumb.
  • Subjects moved their fingers along collinear paths experiencing varying spatial separations between force-feedback regions.
  • Participants reported the number of perceived bumps (zero, one, or two).

Main Results:

  • When the spatial separation of the force-feedback regions matched the finger span, subjects predominantly reported feeling a single bump.
  • Conversely, larger separations led to more frequent reports of two distinct bumps.
  • Perceptual outcomes were consistent with a model favoring interpretations that minimize coincidental alignments.

Conclusions:

  • The brain integrates tactile information from multiple fingertips when spatial coincidences are likely.
  • Perception of force sensations is influenced by the brain's strategy to infer underlying surface structures and minimize accidental alignments.
  • This study provides quantitative insights into the principles governing sensory integration in the human haptic system.