What is a homunculus in anatomy?

The word “homunculus” means little man in Latin. But in neuroanatomy, the cortical homunculus represents either the motor or the sensory distribution along the cerebral cortex of the brain. While the sensory homunculus is a topographic representation of the body parts along the postcentral gyrus of the parietal lobe.

What is the function of the motor homunculus?

A motor homunculus represents a map of brain areas dedicated to motor processing for different anatomical divisions of the body. The primary motor cortex is located in the precentral gyrus, and handles signals coming from the premotor area of the frontal lobes.

Which body parts have the largest representation in the motor homunculus?

Because of the fine motor skills and sense nerves found in these particular parts of the body, they are represented as being larger on the homunculus. A part of the body with fewer sensory and/or motor connections to the brain is represented to appear smaller.

Why is the homunculus distorted?

This illustration of somatotopy is called a homunculus, and the distortion of the body in the homunculus is due to the uneven representation of body parts in the somatosensory cortex. Those areas of the body having the greatest tactile sensitivity have the greatest amount of cortical tissue for processing.

What does the term homunculus stand for?

Homunculus Homunculus The concept of a homunculus (Latin for “little man”, plural “homunculi”; the diminutive of homo, “human being”) is often used to illustrate the functioning of a system. **DID YOU KNOW-Homunculus is latin for ‘Little People.

What is Brodmann area?

A Brodmann area is a region of the cerebral cortex, in the human or other primate brain, defined by its cytoarchitecture, or histological structure and organization of cells.

What is a homunculus in psychology?

homunculi) 1. a putative process or entity in the mind or the nervous system whose operations are invoked to explain some aspect of human behavior or experience.

Who discovered the homunculus?

Wilder Penfield
This mapping of our sense of touch onto the cortex gives us a representation of the body which was named the Homunculus by its discoverer, Wilder Penfield. Figure 1.

What does somatosensory mean?

Overview. The somatosensory system is the part of the sensory system concerned with the conscious perception of touch, pressure, pain, temperature, position, movement, and vibration, which arise from the muscles, joints, skin, and fascia.

Who gave the concept of homunculus?

The origin of the homunculus concept of a pre-existing fetus is usually credited to Dutch telescopist and microscopist Nicolaas Hartsoeker. He receives this credit largely because it was his sketch in the 1694 Essai de Dioptrique of a homunculus in a sperm cell that illustrated the concept most clearly.

Is homunculus a real word?

Although the actual word “homunculus” was never used, Carl Jung believed that the concept first appeared in the Visions of Zosimos, written in the third century AD. The Greek word “anthroparion” is similar to “homunculus” – a diminutive form of “person”.

What is the role of the homunculus in the brain?

Homunculus is an imaginary map generated on the data available on the different neurological connections. It mainly involves the brain, sensory processing and motor processing. Furthermore, nerves and the spinal cord also play an important role in generating the homunculus.

Where are the sensory and motor homunculus located?

The cortical maps depicted here—on the left, the sensory homunculus (homunculus meaning “little man” in Latin), and, on the right, the motor homunculus—were developed to assist us in understanding broadly that regions of the cortex correspond to regions in the body.

Where do nerve fibres terminate in the motor homunculus?

Nerve fibres—conducting somatosensory information from all over the body—terminate in various areas of the parietal lobe in the cerebral cortex, forming a representational map of the body. A motor homunculus represents a map of brain areas dedicated to motor processing for different anatomical divisions of the body.

What does cortical homunculus mean in medical terms?

A cortical homunculus is a distorted representation of the human body, based on a neurological “map” of the areas and proportions of the human brain dedicated to processing motor functions, or sensory functions, for different parts of the body. The word homunculus is Latin for “little man”,…