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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 Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System01:11

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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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Synesthesia01:27

Synesthesia

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Synesthesia is a remarkable condition where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with synesthesia experience a blending or crossing of their senses, such as sight and sound, leading to cross-modal sensations. In this condition, the stimulation of one sense, such as hearing a number or musical note, triggers an experience of another sense, like sensing a specific color, taste, or smell. People...
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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.
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Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex01:24

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

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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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Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways01:29

Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways

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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.
The somatosensory system is divided into three main pathways: the dorsal (or posterior) column-medial lemniscus, spinothalamic (or anterolateral), and spinocerebellar pathways.
The dorsal...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 24, 2025

Testing Tactile Masking between the Forearms
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Vicarious touch: Overlapping neural patterns between seeing and feeling touch.

Sophie Smit1, Denise Moerel2, Regine Zopf3

  • 1Perception in Action Research Centre & School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, 16 University Ave, NSW 2109, Australia.

Neuroimage
|July 9, 2023
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Seeing touch activates similar neural information as feeling touch, but only in individuals who experience vicarious touch. This suggests simulation of touch involves abstracted representations, not direct sensory replication.

Keywords:
ElectroencephalographyMultivariate pattern analysisShared representationsSimulation theoriesTactile empathyVicarious touch

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Somatosensory processing
  • Vicarious experience

Background:

  • Simulation theories suggest vicarious touch occurs when observing touch activates similar neural representations as direct touch.
  • Previous electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies show modulation of somatosensory responses when observing touch.
  • However, these methods cannot confirm if the *information* in neural signals overlaps between seen and felt touch.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if observing touch evokes overlapping neural representations with the first-hand experience of touch.
  • To determine if this overlap in neural information is specific to individuals who report experiencing vicarious touch.
  • To explore the temporal dynamics of neural overlap during vicarious touch perception.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized time-resolved multivariate pattern analysis on whole-brain electroencephalography (EEG) data.
  • Participants experienced direct tactile stimulation on their fingers (tactile trials) or watched matched videos of touch on another person's fingers (visual trials).
  • A classifier was trained on tactile trials to decode touch location (e.g., thumb vs. little finger) and tested on visual trials.

Main Results:

  • EEG successfully decoded touch location during direct tactile stimulation in all participants.
  • Crucially, the classifier trained on tactile data could only decode touch location from visual trials in individuals who reported experiencing vicarious touch.
  • This indicates a shared neural information content for touch location between seeing and feeling touch, but only in those with vicarious touch experiences.

Conclusions:

  • Observing touch can evoke neural representations that overlap in information content with direct tactile experiences.
  • This overlap is specific to individuals who report experiencing vicarious touch, supporting simulation theories.
  • The findings suggest that vicarious tactile sensations arise from abstracted neural representations of directly felt touch, particularly in later stages of processing.