U.S. medical scientists have identified the neural circuitry in the human brain that facilitates spatial discrimination through the sensation of touch.

   The research team led by Dr. Krish Sathian, a professor of neurology in the Emory University School of Medicine, used functional magnetic resonance imaging in discovering heightened neural activity in a network of frontoparietal regions of the brain when people engage in fine tactile spatial discrimination.

   "What is interesting is that we found the most relevant areas of the brain for spatial processing are on the right side -- the same side of the body that was used to feel the stimuli," said Randall Stilla, an Emory research MRI technologist.

   Added Sathian: "We usually think of the left side of the brain as controlling the right side of the body, which is generally true. But more and more we are finding that the right side of the brain is particularly important in many types of sensory processing."

   The study -- which included Gopikrishna Deshpande, Stephen Laconte and Xiaoping Hu of the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory -- is reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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