the neurons in the mole’s somatosensory cortex to respond to touch and other 5 milliseconds for motor commands to be conducted back to the star. In comparison, this whole process takes 600 milliseconds in humans. The importance of the star-like nose in the mole’s lifestyle is evidenced in the somatosensory representation of the nose. Electrophysiological experiments using electrodes placed on the cortex during stimulation of the body demonstrated that roughly 52% of the cortex is devoted to the nose. This means that more than half of the brain is dedicated to processing sensory information acquired by this organ, even when the nose itself is only roughly 10% of the mole’s actual size. Thus, it may be concluded that the nose substitutes for the eyes, with the information from it being processed so as to produce a tactile map of the environment under the mole’s nose. As other mammals, the somatosensory cortex of the star-nosed mole is somatotopically organized such that sensory information from adjacent parts of the nose is processed in adjacent regions of the somatosensory cortex. Therefore, the rays are also represented in the brain. The inferior most sensitive pair of rays (11th) had a larger representation on the somatosensory cortex, even when these are the shortest pair of appendages in the nose of the star-nosed mole. Other important fact of the representation of the star in the cerebral cortex is that each hemisphere had clearly visible set of 11 stripes representing the contralateral star. In some favorable cases, a smaller third set of stripes was also apparent; opposite to other body structures that have a unique representation, with each half of the body represented in the opposite cerebral hemisphere. Thus, opposite to other species, the somatosensory representation of the tactile fovea is not correlated with anatomical parameters but rather is highly correlated with patterns of behavior. Recordings from active neurons in the somatosensory cortex show that most cells (97%) responded to light tactile stimulation with a mean latency of 11.6 milliseconds. Besides a fairly large proportion of these neurons (41%) were inhibited by stimulation of proximate Eimer’s organs outside their excitatory receptive field. Consequently, the ability of the star to rapidly determine location and identity of objects is enhanced by small receptive fields and its associated collateral inhibition system that constrains cortical neurons with short latency responses. Sensitivity to mechanical stimuli In 1996, Vanderbilt PhD candidate Paul Marasco