Although it was known that finger kinesthesia relies on skin sensation, recent research has found that kinesthesia-based haptic perception relies strongly on the forces experienced during touch.
The somatosensory system is also associated with the perception of temperature, taste, vision, proprioception and kinesthesia.
Kinesthesia is a key component in muscle memory and hand-eye coordination, and training can improve this sense (see blind contour drawing).
There is a quite detailed discussion of receptors in human skin, as well as of those involved in proprioception, or internal sensing of position of limbs, and kinesthesia.
This supports the notion that motor imagery is a mental rehearsal of movement, during which expected kinesthetic sensation is emulated by recruiting multiple motor areas, commonly activated by pure kinesthesia.
The target article presents no convincing experimental evidence in favor of this view for motor control and kinesthesia.
