Imagined touch by the mind

In an article published in 2021, the authors “recorded neurons within the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of a human . . . participant during actual touch presentation and during a tactile imagery task” (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLilfe.61646). The results of the study showed that PPC neurons that are activated by physical touch are also activated “during a tactile imagery task in a body part-specific manner.” It is a novel finding that suggested “PPC involvement in the cognitive processing of touch [encoding]. . . . cognitive processing prior to active imagery as well as during imagery shares a neuronal substrate with actual touch.” Of particular interest is that the study participant was a tetraplegic in whom touch sensation was tested in insensate parts of the body. Actual touch in those parts was found to elicit no neuronal activation, but imagined touch did activate the known coherent neuronal pathways normally activated by direct touch. Activation was attributed to the cognitive mind through the PPC. The mechanism for the activation was not addressed, but there is accumulating evidence that activation could have been via waveforms generated by the cognitive mind and transmitted encoded through the PPC and its coherent synaptic networks. I propose that the immaterial mind of the study participant accounted for the interpretation of the neural codes as touch, a dualist interaction between immaterial and material entities.

Stan Lennard