Information Processing in the Somatosensory System

This satellite symposium was held under the auspices of the International Union of Physiological Sciences, whose centennial congress was held in Helsinki. The theme of this symposium was the study of the neuronal mechanisms of tactile perception, that is to say, the neural representation of the external world relayed through the somatosensory system. The most productive approach to this problem is that of single nueron analysis, which has led to successful explanations of primitive aspects of perception with relatively simple, but adequate, linking hypotheses. The aim has never been to study single neurons in isolation, but rather, to reconstruct population events that are going on in the nervous system. It is therefore obvious that the most fruitful path to future research would be to study significant samples of those neuron populations that are assumed to be essential for the perceptual processes.