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Related Concept Videos

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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 10, 2026

Somatosensory Event-related Potentials from Orofacial Skin Stretch Stimulation

Somatosensory Event-related Potentials from Orofacial Skin Stretch Stimulation

Published on: December 18, 2015

The Somatosensory Mismatch Negativity.

Miro Grundei¹, Wolfger von der Behrens², Piia Astikainen³

¹Neurocomputation and Neuroimaging Unit, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

The European Journal of Neuroscience

|November 25, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The somatosensory mismatch negativity (sMMN) acts as a predictive error signal in the brain, reflecting automatic change detection in touch. Research highlights its role in sensory processing, learning, and various neurological conditions.

Keywords:

ERP mismatch negativity predictive processing somatosensory system surprise

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Last Updated: Jan 10, 2026

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Sensory Perception
Computational Neuroscience

Background:

Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a neural signature for auditory change detection.
Analogous responses, the somatosensory MMN (sMMN), are increasingly recognized in other sensory domains.

Purpose of the Study:

To provide an overview of the somatosensory MMN (sMMN).
To summarize research on sMMN neural mechanisms and functional significance.
To explore its role as a predictive error signal.

Main Methods:

Review of human and animal research.
Analysis of electrophysiological and neuroimaging evidence.
Examination of computational modeling studies.

Main Results:

Primary and secondary somatosensory cortices (S1/S2) are key sMMN generators.
sMMN involves sensory adaptation and deviance detection.
Computational models show sMMN encodes probabilistic structures in sequential input.

Conclusions:

sMMN is crucial for somatosensory predictive processing and learning.
It functions as a predictive error signal in the somatosensory system.
sMMN has clinical relevance in disorders, aging, and body representation.