Research

Every bodily movement autonomously generates a somatic-sensation. The somatic-sensation influences various aspects of animal behavior, including perception, attention and motor function. We are studying how the central nervous system deals with this time-varying somatic-sensation for the generation of proper behavior. Using humans, monkeys, rodents and targeting a wide area of the central nervous system such as the spinal cord, brain stem, cerebellum and cerebral cortex, our experiments are designed to uncover the mechanisms underlying behavior by selective processing of somatosensory signals. Currently, we are working on the neural mechanisms of sensory attenuation during voluntary movement, motor learning mechanism based on sensory prediction error and multimodal integration in the somatosensory processing within the spinal cord, cuneate nucleus and cerebral cortex.