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Related Concept Videos

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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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Quantitative Assessment of Cortical Auditory-tactile Processing in Children with Disabilities
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Normalization in human somatosensory cortex.

Gijs Joost Brouwer1, Vanessa Arnedo2, Shani Offen1

  • 1Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York; and.

Journal of Neurophysiology
|August 28, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals cross-digit suppression in the human somatosensory cortex. A normalization model explains how the brain suppresses signals from one digit when another is stimulated concurrently.

Keywords:
fMRIforward modelnormalizationsomatosensory cortexsuppression

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Sensory Neuroscience

Background:

  • The somatosensory cortex processes tactile information, but the mechanisms of signal interaction between adjacent digits are not fully understood.
  • Cross-digit suppression, where stimulation of one digit affects perception of another, suggests neural interactions within the somatosensory cortex.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate cross-digit suppression in the human somatosensory cortex using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
  • To test if a computational model based on divisive normalization can explain the observed suppression effects.

Main Methods:

  • fMRI was employed to measure brain activity in the somatosensory cortex while subjects received tactile stimulation to the thumb and/or middle finger.
  • Psychophysical detection thresholds were measured to quantify sensitivity to target stimulation.
  • A forward regression model was used to deconvolve fMRI signals into hypothetical channels selective for each digit.
  • A computational model based on divisive normalization was fitted to the experimental data.

Main Results:

  • Subjects showed reduced sensitivity to target stimulation when a second digit was concurrently stimulated, indicating cross-digit suppression.
  • fMRI data revealed voxels in the postcentral gyrus responding to stimulation of either digit.
  • The hypothetical channels demonstrated selective responses, with the target channel showing gain suppression by the mask digit.
  • The divisive normalization model accurately predicted the observed neural responses under both single-digit and dual-digit stimulation conditions.

Conclusions:

  • Divisive normalization is a plausible neural computation underlying cross-digit suppression in the human somatosensory cortex.
  • This finding supports the hypothesis that normalization serves as a canonical neural computation across different sensory modalities.
  • The study provides insights into how the brain manages competing sensory inputs to maintain perceptual clarity.