Latest Sensory cortex Stories

Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com Sight. Sound. Touch. These are just a few of the senses that the body has. This theme of senses was the subject of a recent study by neuroscientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) who reported a relationship between touch and emotion via the brain’s primary somatosensory cortex. The findings, described in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), were discovered by researchers Valeria Gazzola and...

Two new studies show that the thalamus--the small central brain structure often characterized as a mere pit-stop for sensory information on its way to the cortex--is heavily involved in sensory processing, and is an important conductor of the brain's complex orchestra.Published in Nature Neuroscience and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two studies from the laboratory of Murray Sherman both demonstrate the important role of the thalamus in shaping what humans see, hear...