The diversity of contemporary investigative approaches included in this volume provides an exciting account of our current understanding of brain mechanisms responsible for sensory and perceptual experience in the areas of touch, kinesthesia, and pain.Postgraduate research students in sensory physiology, neurology, psychology and anatomy, and researchers themselves will find that this volume addresses many of the key issues in our attempts to understand the neural mechanisms that mediate sensory experience arising from the body as a whole, the so-called somatic senses, in particular for touch and pain. The volume provides a record of the occasion of the St Petersburg IUPS symposium, chaired by the editors of this volume, and includes some added recent contributions from other leading international figures in the field. Brought together under the sponsoring banner of the IUPS Commission for Somatosensory Physiology and Pain, these scientists with their different experimental approaches seek collectively to understand the brain mechanisms that underlie our own nature and experience.