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A 2-D model of cortical sensory homunculus. A cortical homunculus (from Latin homunculus 'little man, miniature human' [1] [2]) is a distorted representation of the human body, based on a neurological "map" of the areas and portions of the human brain dedicated to processing motor functions, and/ or sensory functions, for different parts of the body.
This cortex is typically represented as a sensory homunculus which orients the specific body parts and their respective locations upon the homunculus. Areas such as the appendages, digits, penis, [2] and face can draw their sensory locations upon the somatosensory cortex. The areas which are finely controlled (e.g., the digits) have larger ...
The homunculus is commonly used today in scientific disciplines such as psychology as a teaching or memory tool to describe the distorted scale model of a human drawn or sculpted to reflect the relative space human body parts occupy on the somatosensory cortex (the sensory homunculus) and the motor cortex (the motor homunculus). Both the motor ...
Like other sensory areas, there is a map of sensory space in this location, called the sensory homunculus. The primary somatosensory cortex was initially defined from surface stimulation studies of Wilder Penfield , and parallel surface potential studies of Bard, Woolsey, and Marshall.
In neuroanatomy, topographic map is the ordered projection of a sensory surface (like the retina or the skin) or an effector system (like the musculature) to one or more structures of the central nervous system. Topographic maps can be found in all sensory systems and in many motor systems.
A sensory map is an area of the brain which responds to sensory stimulation, and are spatially organized according to some feature of the sensory stimulation. In some cases the sensory map is simply a topographic representation of a sensory surface such as the skin, cochlea, or retina. In other cases it represents other stimulus properties ...
The cortical homunculus, a map of somatosensory areas of the brain, was devised by Wilder Penfield. Fine touch (or discriminative touch) is a sensory modality that allows a subject to sense and localize touch. The form of touch where localization is not possible is known as crude touch.
The primary sensory areas receive signals from the sensory nerves and tracts by way of relay nuclei in the thalamus. Primary sensory areas include the visual cortex of the occipital lobe, the auditory cortex in parts of the temporal lobe and insular cortex, and the somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe.