A central, unanswered question of neuroscience is how exactly different areas of the cerebral cortex communicate to...

A central, unanswered question of neuroscience is how exactly different areas of the cerebral cortex communicate to process sensory stimuli and produce appropriate behavior. New work by researchers that explores the sense of touch in mice provides some answers: the processing of sensory information is goal-directed and depends on what you want to achieve. Specifically, the researchers observed that nerve cells in the sensory cortex that connect to distinct brain areas are activated differentially depending on the task to be solved.
 Image: Nerve cells in the primary somatosensory area (S1) of the mouse’s cerebral cortex. Cells dyed violet project to the secondary somatosensory area (S2), cells dyed blue to the motor cortex (M1). The strength of the schematic representation of the communication between the areas depends on the tasks to be performed: left, sandpaper differentiation; right, localization problem.

More info: http://www.mediadesk.uzh.ch/articles/2013/problemloesen-lenkt-die-verarbeitung-von-sinneseindruecken_en.html