Neural Mechanisms in Somesthesis: Recent Progress and Future Problems

Abstract

Professor Ottoson, friends and colleagues: I am pleased to be invited to attend this symposium, and to participate in this opening program. Firstly, because it honours Professor Yngve Zotterman, whom I admired greatly for his many contributions to the subject we address: the neural mechanisms in somesthesis. And, for his warm and effervescent personality, filled with collegiality for Neurophysiologists from every land. Secondly, because I have for a dozen years worked in a different field, the central neural mechanisms of spatial perception and directed visual attention. I hope this temporal detachment will lend some perspective to what I wish to say. That is, to summarize what I perceive to have been the main advances of the last decodes; and, to suggest where opportunity lies in the years ahead.