From touch to “sense body ownership”

Journal title PNEI REVIEW
Author/s Nicola Barsotti, Marco Chiera, Alessandro Casini, Diego Lanaro, Andrea Corti
Publishing Year 2024 Issue 2024/2
Language Italian Pages 12 P. 86-97 File size 147 KB
DOI 10.3280/PNEI2024-002011
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Studies on touch are increasingly at the center of scientific research. It is no coincidence that in 2021, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their contributions to identifying the receptors responsible for the perception of temperature variations and mechanical stimuli. We can say, therefore, that this award is a tribute to the somatosensory world (SS) that helps define our contact with the external world and our ability to adapt. In fact, studies on touch aim to answer a question that many philosophers have discussed: “how do we perceive the world?” René Descartes imagined that the body’s surface was connected to the brain by very thin wires to recognize the environment we touch. This intuition was confirmed many years later by Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Gasser, discoverers of nerve fibers (Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1944 for their discoveries on SS sensitivity). Julius and Patapoutian have added an important piece: understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate thermal and tactile perception.

Keywords: Touch, Interoception, Proprioception, Somatosensory, Skin, Insula.

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Nicola Barsotti, Marco Chiera, Alessandro Casini, Diego Lanaro, Andrea Corti, Dal tocco al “sense body ownership” in "PNEI REVIEW" 2/2024, pp 86-97, DOI: 10.3280/PNEI2024-002011