Inability to make voluntary movements in the absence of paralysis or other motor or sensory impairment, especially an inability to make proper use of an object.

Neural spatial representation of the body or areas of the sensory world perceived by a sensory organ.

Perception of pain, temperature, and itch.

Field that develops computer-assisted devices to replace lost biological function.

Procedure in which restraint of a healthy limb forces a patient to use an impaired limb to enhance recovery of function.

Pathway from the spinal cord to the thalamus that carries information about pain and temperature.

Comprehensive map of the structural connectivity (the physical wiring) of an organism’s nervous system.

Movement modules preprogrammed by the brain and produced as a unit.

Somatosensory system comprising a set of receptors in each inner ear that respond to body position and to movement of the head.

Hypothetical neural circuit in which activity in fine-touch and pressure pathways diminishes the activity in pain and temperature pathways.

Paucity of movement, as seen in Parkinson disease.

Pathway that carries fine-touch and pressure fibers.

Paralysis of the legs and arms due to spinal cord injury.

Skin that does not have hair follicles but contains larger numbers of sensory receptors than do hairy skin areas.

Paralysis of the legs due to spinal cord injury.

Loss of incoming sensory input, usually due to damage to sensory fibers; also loss of any afferent input to a structure.

Body sensory receptor that responds as long as a sensory stimulus is on the body.

Excessive involuntary movement, as seen in Tourette syndrome.

Automatic response in which an animal’s hind limb reaches to remove a stimulus from the surface of its body.

Disorder of the middle ear resulting in vertigo and loss of balance.

Representation of the human body in the sensory or motor cortex; also any topographical representation of the body by a neural area.

Perception of the position and movement of the body, limbs, and head.

Condition in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or communicate verbally because of complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles except the eyes.

Part of the thalamus that carries information about body senses to the somatosensory cortex.

Reflex requiring one synapse between sensory input and movement.

Perceptual ability to discriminate objects on the basis of touch.

Pain that arises in one of the internal organs but is felt on the surface of the body.

Bundle of nerve fibers directly connecting the cerebral cortex to the spinal cord, branching at the brainstem into an opposite-side lateral tract that informs movement of limbs and digits and a same-side anterior tract that informs movement of the trunk; also called pyramidal tract.

Nuclei in the midbrain that surround the cerebral aqueduct joining the third and fourth ventricles; PAG neurons contain circuits for species-typical behaviors (e.g., female sexual behavior) and play an important role in the modulation of pain.

Group of disorders that result from brain damage acquired perinatally (at or near birth).

Body sensory receptor that responds briefly to the onset of a stimulus on the body.