David Ginty, PHD
Department of Neurobiology
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Harvard Medical School
Making Sense of Touch
Our relationship with the physical world is rich, complex, and essential for virtually all aspects of life. How does the nervous system encode component dimensions of a tactile stimulus –pressure, sharpness, vibratory frequency, roughness, wetness, adhesiveness, and compliance– and superimpose these dimensions with respect to stimulus location on the body and direction and speed of stimulus movement? In this lecture I will describe properties and functions of the cutaneous mechanoreceptors, which are the primary sensory neurons of touch, and the form underlying their function. I will also highlight recent insights into the central representation of touch, including some surprising findings regarding the central representation of mechanical vibration, and the functional organization of the subcortical somatosensory system.
Host Information: Aleyna Silcott ([email protected])
The Columbia Neuroscience Seminar series is a collaborative effort of Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, the Department of Neuroscience, the Doctoral Program in Neurobiology and Behavior and the Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative, and with support from the Kavli Institute for Brain Science.