RELATED TERMS: Somatosensory System;
In order to interact sensibly with the world and to manipulate objects skilfully, information needs to be shared between the somatosensory and the motor systems, forming a complex somato-sensori-motor system. The two systems communicate via a network of extensive connections between the sensory and motor cortices but also by motor cortex cells responding directly to sensory stimuli and sensory cortex cells controlling motor behaviour. Despite having relatively good knowledge of the anatomical substrate for communication between the primary sensory and motor cortices, particularly with respect to the hand, our understanding of what information is transferred remains poor (Tamè et al. 2015).
A major question investigated by Tamè et al. (2015) is whether and how somatic topology is preserved in the transfer from the somatosensory to the motor cortices. Tame et al. specifically investigated whether spatial information about which fingers are stimulated is reflected in the excitability of the motor cortex, or whether the output of the motor system does not preserve information about their spatial distribution.
They found that the ‘time-selective’ sensory–motor interactions demonstrated
are likely to be important for haptic control, as complex hand–object interactions require closely timed events to be precisely localised in space, whereas the spatial resolution of more distant events is less critical.
References
Tamè, L. et al. (2015) Somatotopy and temporal dynamics of sensorimotor interactions: Evidence from double afferent inhibition. European Journal of Neuroscience, 41(11), 1459–1465. doi: 10.1111/ejn.12890
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