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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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Sensory Functions of the Skin01:16

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The skin is the largest organ of the human body and plays a crucial role in our sensory perception. It contains a vast network of sensory receptors that contribute to the skin's protective function by perceiving physical, biological, and environmental cues and generating relevant responses.
There are two main categories of receptors on the skin: capsulated and non-capsulated. The non-capsulated ones are mainly the pain receptors. The capsulated ones can be further categorized based on the...
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Action Potential01:14

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Neurons communicate by firing action potentials—the electrochemical signal that is propagated along the axon. The signal results in the release of neurotransmitters at axon terminals, thereby transmitting information to the nervous system. An action potential is a specific "all-or-none" change in membrane potential that results in a rapid spike in voltage.
Membrane potential in neurons
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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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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.
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The dorsal...
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Mechanically-gated Ion Channels01:12

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Mechanically-gated ion channels are proteins found in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell membranes that open in response to mechanical stress. Tension, compression, swelling, and shear stress can alter the conformation of the protein, opening a transmembrane channel that allows the passage of ions for signal transmission. In eukaryotes, mechanically-gated channels are distributed in several regions like the neurons, lungs, skin, bladder, and heart, where they play critical roles in numerous...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 3, 2026

Using Facial Electromyography to Assess Facial Muscle Reactions to Experienced and Observed Affective Touch in Humans
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Active Touch and Self-Motion Encoding by Merkel Cell-Associated Afferents.

Kyle S Severson1, Duo Xu1, Margaret Van de Loo2

  • 1Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, Brain Science Institute, The Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA; Neuroscience Training Program, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.

Neuron
|April 25, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Merkel afferents in mice whiskers encode both object surface features during touch and self-motion cues. This suggests touch and proprioception signals converge early in the nervous system.

Keywords:
active sensationbarrel cortexneural codingperceptionprimary afferentsproprioceptionreafferentsensorimotor integrationsomatosensationwhisker system

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Sensory Biology
  • Mechanobiology

Background:

  • Touch perception relies on integrating signals from various peripheral mechanoreceptors.
  • Merkel-cell associated afferents are crucial for encoding surface features during form perception.
  • Direct measurement of Merkel afferent activity during active touch has been lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the activity of Merkel afferents during active touch in behaving mice.
  • To determine how these afferents encode information during self-motion and object interaction.
  • To understand the convergence of sensory information at the neural level.

Main Methods:

  • Recording neural activity from Merkel and slowly adapting afferents in the mouse whisker system.
  • Utilizing behaving mice engaged in active touch tasks.
  • Employing a mechanical model to explain afferent responses.

Main Results:

  • Merkel afferents respond to both self-motion and active touch.
  • Responses are primarily sensitive to bending moment (torque) and its rate of change.
  • Self-motion responses encode whisker position within a whisk cycle (phase), not absolute angle.

Conclusions:

  • Merkel afferents transmit multiplexed information about whisker position and surface features.
  • Proprioception and touch information appear to converge at the earliest neural processing stages.
  • Findings provide insights into the neural basis of active tactile sensing.