Pain processing in the mouse somatosensory cortex (S1) was characterized by positioning NeuroNexus 4-shank, 32-channel probes (A4x8-5mm-100-200-177-A32, A4x8-5mm-50-200-177-A32 or Buzsaki32-A32) to distinguish neurons encoding nociceptive versus tactile information. Hironobu Osaki et al. from Tokyo Women’s Medical University performed simultaneous single-unit and multi-unit recordings in E-row barrel fields (BF, tactile) and the adjacent dysgranular region (Dys, nociceptive) using different shanks of their probes. The dense layouts of the probes also enabled distinguishing cortical layers: layer 2/3 processes the two inputs separately, but they converge in layer 5.