Information about this image:

An image of the rat forepaw with color-coded tactile receptive fields recorded from the middle ventral posterior lateral (VPL) thalamic nucleus. The paw representation in the VPL of the rat is inverted with respect to most mammals studied; however, it shares the general trends seen in primates with subregions representing separate somatosensory modalities preferentially, such as proprioception in the rostral, light cutaneous in the middle, and perhaps pain in the caudal VPL. For details see Francis JT, Xu S, and Chapin JK. Proprioceptive and Cutaneous Representations of the Rat Ventral Posterolateral Thalamus. J Neurophysiol 99: 2291-2304, 2008. First published February 20, 2008; doi:10.1152/jn.01206.2007.

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