As a movement specialist first and a recently appointed neuroscientist, I’ve spent over a decade researching and witnessing human movement. What I’ve learned throughout my years as an observer is that we’ll never know how to “fix” something until its normal functioning ceases. And to “fix” is a term I dislike as it infers that one was broken to begin with.

The work of David Ginty, professor of Neurobiology at Harvard explores how our perception and response correlate with our environment. First, be exploring the function and organization of the above neural circuits, second, by establishing what went wrong when there’s a case of injury or disease.

The somatosensory system consists of mechanoreceptors (detect touch, stretch, motion, pressure), chemoreceptors (detect change in blood, taste), thermoreceptors (detect changes in temperature), nociceptors (detect sensations of pain).

The primary somatosensory cortex receives the information from these receptors, but the secondary somatosensory cortex processes and stores it. Injury or disease can occur at either of the two.

Since this is the pathway of information from the outside world into our brain, this information it contains is essential, but also relies on previous perception learned and retained unless we’re in our developmental years. As always, it’s more complex than it seems.

More on this system in the next post and how its memory can affect movement.

Jocelyne Pelchat · MSc-Neuro

Principal - The Cornerstone Pilates Inc.
Body Harmonics ®-CPT · NCPT® · 
RYT · Biomechanics and Post Rehab Specialist 
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