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Located in the parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex, the postcentral gyrus is a vertically oriented, cerebral convolution located immediately posterior to, and running parallel with, the central sulcus. The postcentral gyrus is the primary somatosensory cortex and receives the majority of the somatic sensory relay information from the thalamus. The body is somatotopically represented on the gyrus in an inverted pattern with regions receiving sensory information from the head located in the lower portions. Damage to the postcentral gyrus may result in contralateral somatosensory disturbances primarily in tactile localization and discrimination and postural sensitivity.
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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Bigbee, J. (2011). Postcentral Gyrus. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79948-3_353
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79948-3_353
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-79947-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-79948-3
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