Sensory gating in the ipsilateral somatosensory cortex during voluntary activity: what might this mean for chronic limb pain?

Abstract

It is well established that motor tasks are associated with gating of irrelevant sensory input from the contralateral side of the body. In a recent issue of The Journal of Physiology, Lei and Perez (2017) present novel findings that suggest the ipsilateral somatosensory cortex (iS1) is also likely to contribute to sensorimotor integration. The hypothesis for the involvement of iS1 emerges from two main anatomo‐functional neural connections: reciprocal connections between the motor cortex and area 1 of the ipsilateral somatosensory cortex, and relatively dense connections between the left and the right (interhemispheric) area 2 of the primary somatosensory cortices.