on the way to the cerebrum 15) Almost all somatic sensory signals pass through the A) cerebellum B) thalamus C) hypothalamus D) corpus callosum E) corticospinal tracts Solution A large number of pathways travel through the thalamus before reaching the cortex. All sensory signals except for olfaction also pass through the thalamus first. Why so? Because the thalamus is considered as the relay station. The thalamus is made up of a number of nuclei that possess functional specialization for dealing with particular type of information. This means that all the sensory information is first travelled to the thalamus which is then routed to a nucleus tailored to dealing with that type of sensory data. The information is then sent from the nucleus to the appropriate area in the cortex where it is further processed. In this way, the nuceli of the thalamus make sure to transfer the signal to the area which is specialized to handle that information for further processing..