Event:

The astonishing variety of the phenomena resulting from finger contacts may be regarded as a trove of information that can be mined to learn about the nature and the properties of objects that are touched. This physics, which is very different from that available to the other senses, is likely to have fashioned our somatosensory system at all levels of its organisation, from early mechanics to cognition. The talk will illustrate this idea through examples and show how the physics of mechanical interactions shape the messages that are sent to the brain; and how the early stages of the somatosensory system en route to the primary areas are organised to process these messages.