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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.

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

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...

Tactile and Chemical Senses

Tactile and Chemical Senses

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.

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth perception is the ability to perceive objects three-dimensionally. It relies on two types of cues: binocular and monocular. Binocular cues depend on the combination of images from both eyes and how the eyes work together. Since the eyes are in slightly different positions, each eye captures a slightly different image. This disparity between images, known as binocular disparity, helps the brain interpret depth. When the brain compares these images, it determines the distance to an object.

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

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.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex....

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

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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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 9, 2025

Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator TSPAS

Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator TSPAS

Published on: July 30, 2020

Spatial integration during active tactile sensation drives orientation perception.

Jennifer Brown¹, Ian Antón Oldenburg¹, Gregory I Telian²

¹Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.

|April 7, 2021

Summary

Mice use multiple whiskers to identify object orientation, with barrel cortex neurons summing whisker input. Inactivating these neurons impairs orientation discrimination, highlighting their role in active haptic sensing.

Keywords:

active sensation barrel cortex cortical integration optogenetics orientation tuning sensory cortex sensory perception shape perception two photon imaging

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Last Updated: Nov 9, 2025

Tactile Semiautomatic Passive-Finger Angle Stimulator TSPAS

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Published on: July 30, 2020

Assessment of Spatial Lingual Tactile Sensitivity using a Gratings Orientation Test

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Published on: September 17, 2021

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Sensory processing
Haptics

Background:

Active haptic sensation is crucial for object identification.
The neural circuits underlying haptic object identification are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural basis of whisker-based object orientation discrimination.
To determine how the brain processes tactile information from multiple whiskers.

Main Methods:

Optogenetics
Two-photon imaging
High-speed behavioral tracking in mice
Whisker-based object orientation discrimination task

Main Results:

Orientation discrimination relies on summating input from multiple whiskers along the whisker arc.
Neural populations in the barrel cortex summate across whiskers to encode orientation.
Optogenetic inactivation of the barrel cortex or layer 4 excitatory neurons impaired performance.

Conclusions:

Spatial summation across an active haptic array generates object orientation representations.
The barrel cortex, including layer 4, is essential for processing orientation information during active exploration.
Infragranular layers alone are insufficient for solving orientation discrimination tasks.