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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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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 14, 2026

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback

Published on: May 23, 2019

Haptic adaptation to slant: No transfer between exploration modes.

Loes C J van Dam^1,2, Myrthe A Plaisier³, Catharina Glowania¹

¹Cognitive Neuroscience / Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence (CITEC), Bielefeld University, Universitätsstraße 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.

Scientific Reports

|October 5, 2016

Summary

Human touch uses serial and parallel exploration for shape sensing. Adaptation to one mode does not affect the other, suggesting distinct processing pathways in the brain.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Haptics
Somatosensation

Background:

Human touch is an active sense, involving both serial (sequential) and parallel (simultaneous) exploration of object surfaces.
Both exploration modes yield similar global shape information, hinting at early integration in the sensory cortex.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether haptic shape perception is processed in a unified manner across different exploration modes (serial vs. parallel).
To determine if adaptation-induced perceptual changes transfer between serial and parallel haptic exploration modes.

Main Methods:

Utilized an adaptation-and-transfer paradigm to induce changes in haptic perception.
Applied slant-adaptation using either serial (single finger) or parallel (whole hand) exploration.
Tested for perceptual transfer of adaptation effects between the two exploration modes.

Main Results:

Adaptation-induced perceptual changes did not transfer between serial and parallel exploration modes.
Serial and parallel exploration components adapted to distinct kinaesthetic aspects, not object shape itself.
This indicates that information from different exploration modes is not combined early in sensory processing.

Conclusions:

Haptic shape perception is likely processed through distinct pathways for serial and parallel exploration.
Information integration across different haptic exploration modes occurs at later, downstream cortical stages.
Early sensory cortex does not appear to unify shape information from diverse tactile exploration strategies.