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Related Concept Videos

Somatosensation01:33

Somatosensation

42.7K
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 Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System01:11

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

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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:
The receptor level:
The receptor level is the first stage of sensation. It involves the detection of a stimulus by specialized sensory receptors. The stimulus must arrive within the receptor's receptive field. Next, the receptor converts the energy of the...
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Tactile and Chemical Senses01:27

Tactile and Chemical Senses

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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.
616

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 23, 2025

A Two-interval Forced-choice Task for Multisensory Comparisons
07:13

A Two-interval Forced-choice Task for Multisensory Comparisons

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Anisotropy in tactile time perception.

Souta Hidaka1, Luigi Tamè2, Antonio Zafarana2

  • 1Department of Psychology, Rikkyo University, 1-2-26, Kitano, Niiza-shi, Saitama, Japan; Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom.

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior
|April 27, 2020
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Touch perception exhibits a temporal illusion where intervals feel longer across the hand than along it. This tactile temporal anisotropy, similar to spatial distortions, suggests shared perceptual processing for touch.

Keywords:
AnisotropyBody distortionsHandSpatial–temporal perceptionTouch

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Somatosensory Perception
  • Psychophysics

Background:

  • Spatial distortions in tactile perception, such as the perceived distance between two touches, have been documented for centuries.
  • Tactile perception involves dynamic interactions between spatial and temporal inputs, influencing how stimuli are perceived.
  • Existing research highlights links between spatial and temporal aspects of touch, prompting investigation into temporal anisotropies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if a tactile anisotropy in temporal perception exists, analogous to known spatial anisotropies in touch.
  • To determine if perceived duration between two tactile stimuli differs based on their orientation (mediolateral vs. proximodistal) on the hand dorsum.
  • To explore the relationship between spatial and temporal anisotropies in tactile perception.

Main Methods:

  • Participants judged the perceived duration of tactile temporal sequences with identical spatial separations.
  • Stimuli were presented on the hand dorsum, aligned either mediolaterally (across) or proximodistally (along) the hand.
  • Comparisons were made between temporal intervals oriented across versus along the hand, and on both the dorsum and palm.

Main Results:

  • A significant temporal anisotropy was observed: intervals oriented mediolaterally were perceived as longer than those oriented proximodistally.
  • This temporal anisotropy was present on the hand dorsum but not the palm, suggesting a perceptual basis.
  • No correlation was found between the magnitudes of the spatial and temporal anisotropies.

Conclusions:

  • A novel temporal illusion in touch, mirroring spatial distortions, has been demonstrated.
  • Qualitatively similar distorted somatosensory representations likely underlie both temporal and spatial processing of touch.
  • The findings suggest that distinct perceptual mechanisms contribute to spatial and temporal tactile anisotropies.