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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.

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Decoding pressure stimulation locations on the fingers from human neural activation patterns.

Junsuk Kim¹, Yoon Gi Chung, Soon-Cheol Chung

¹aDepartment of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University, Seoul bDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Konkuk University, Chungju cDepartment of Human Factors Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Republic of Korea dDepartment of Human Perception, Cognition and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.

|September 16, 2016

Summary

This study reveals that the supramarginal gyrus and thalamus, not just the primary somatosensory cortex, process tactile location information from fingers. Brain activity patterns help identify which finger is stimulated.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Somatosensory System Research

Background:

Understanding how the human brain processes tactile information is crucial for neuroscience.
Previous research has primarily focused on the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) for touch detection.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the brain activity patterns representing tactile location information on the fingers.
To differentiate the roles of various brain regions in processing tactile input.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to measure brain activity.
Searchlight multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to decode finger location from brain activity patterns.
Univariate general linear model (GLM) analysis was performed for comparison.

Main Results:

Distinct multivoxel patterns corresponding to individual finger locations were identified in the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and thalamus.
Primary somatosensory cortex (S1) showed activation for stimulus detection but not location specificity in this analysis.
SMG and thalamus, unlike S1, contained patterns specific to which finger was stimulated.

Conclusions:

S1 appears involved in detecting the presence of tactile stimuli.
The SMG and thalamus likely play a key role in identifying the specific location of tactile stimulation on the fingers.
These findings support a hierarchical model of information processing within human somatosensory areas.