Physiology
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Boundless Anatomy and Physiology
Peripheral Nervous System
The Somatosensory System
Physiology Textbooks Boundless Anatomy and Physiology Peripheral Nervous System The Somatosensory System
Physiology Textbooks Boundless Anatomy and Physiology Peripheral Nervous System
Physiology Textbooks Boundless Anatomy and Physiology
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Physiology
Concept Version 14
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Mapping the Primary Somatosensory Area

Homunculus

Homunculus

The idea of the cortical homunculus was created by Wilder Penfield and serves as a rough map of the receptive fields for regions of primary somatosensory cortex.

This is a drawing of the cortical homunculus, showing how different organs are mapped out in the homunculus. The resulting image is a grotesquely disfigured human with disproportionately huge hands, lips, and face in comparison to the rest of the body. Because of the fine motor skills and sense nerves found in these particular parts of the body, they are represented as being larger on the homunculus. A part of the body with fewer sensory and/or motor connections to the brain is represented to appear smaller.

Source

    Boundless vets and curates high-quality, openly licensed content from around the Internet. This particular resource used the following sources:

    "Cortical Homunculus."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus Wikipedia CC BY 3.0.

Related Terms

  • somesthetic cortex
  • postcentral gyrus
  • precentral gyrus
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