Stimuluskanal

Stimuluskanal is a term used in neuroscience and related fields to refer to the neural conduit that conveys information about a stimulus from a peripheral receptor to the central nervous system. In a broad sense, it includes the sensory receptor, the afferent nerve fibers, and the central pathways that carry the signal to processing regions such as the thalamus and cortex. The concept is used to distinguish the pathway carrying the incoming stimulus from downstream motor or executive pathways.

In experimental settings, stimuluskanal can also denote a data channel that records the timing and properties of a stimulus. This is used to align neural activity with specific stimulus events, measure response latency, and compute evoked or event-related potentials. The channel may encode features such as modality, intensity, location, and onset time.

Different sensory modalities have characteristic stimulus channels. Visual stimuli are transmitted via the optic pathway, while auditory and somatosensory stimuli use respective afferent pathways. In data analysis, distinguishing the stimulus channel from neural or response channels is essential for interpreting coding schemes, latency, and the temporal structure of processing.

See also: sensory pathway, afferent pathway, evoked potential, event-related potential, neural coding, electrophysiology.