More than half a century ago, animal studies revealed that area 3b of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) receives cutaneous input from slow-adapting (SA) and rapidly adapting (RA) cutaneous receptors in a columnar manner. However, there have been no direct observations of columnar origination in the human SI. Here, for the first time, we investigate the columnar organization in the human S1 by using advanced high-resolution (0.7mm) fMRI at 7T. We find that the human area 3b is columnar organized with alternating SA and RA columnar preferences. We find that SA selective stimulation evokes activity in the middle layers only.
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