Dye-enhanced visualization of rat whiskers for behavioral studies

Rigosa, Jacopo; Lucantonio, Alessandro; Noselli, Giovanni; Fassihi, Arash; Zorzin, Erik; Manzino, Fabrizio; Pulecchi, Francesca; Diamond, Mathew E.

doi:10.7554/elife.25290

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The fine-scale kinematics of the whisking motion in freely moving rodents, however, is difficult to characterize. Machine learning techniques such as deep learning (Hong et al, 2015), visually enhanced whiskers for tracking using florescent dyes (Rigosa et al, 2017) and precise controlled locomotion in virtual reality for head-fixed animal (Sofroniew et al, 2014) are promising future approaches for high precision characterization of whisker motion kinematics during locomotion.…”

Section: The Whisker-mediated Touch Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whisker-Mediated Touch System in Rodents: From Neuron to Behavior

Adibi

2019

Front. Syst. Neurosci.

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A key question in systems neuroscience is to identify how sensory stimuli are represented in neuronal activity, and how the activity of sensory neurons in turn is “read out” by downstream neurons and give rise to behavior. The choice of a proper model system to address these questions, is therefore a crucial step. Over the past decade, the increasingly powerful array of experimental approaches that has become available in non-primate models (e.g., optogenetics and two-photon imaging) has spurred a renewed interest for the use of rodent models in systems neuroscience research. Here, I introduce the rodent whisker-mediated touch system as a structurally well-established and well-organized model system which, despite its simplicity, gives rise to complex behaviors. This system serves as a behaviorally efficient model system; known as nocturnal animals, along with their olfaction, rodents rely on their whisker-mediated touch system to collect information about their surrounding environment. Moreover, this system represents a well-studied circuitry with a somatotopic organization. At every stage of processing, one can identify anatomical and functional topographic maps of whiskers; “barrelettes” in the brainstem nuclei, “barreloids” in the sensory thalamus, and “barrels” in the cortex. This article provides a brief review on the basic anatomy and function of the whisker system in rodents.

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Section: The Whisker-mediated Touch Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whisker-Mediated Touch System in Rodents: From Neuron to Behavior

Adibi

2019

Front. Syst. Neurosci.

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“…Careful monitoring and quantification of motor behavior is essential to investigate a range of cognitive functions (such as motor control, active perception and spatial navigation) in a variety of different species. Examples include tracking eye movements in primate and non-primate species (Remmel, 1984;Stahl et al, 2000;Zoccolan et al, 2010;Kimmel et al, 2012;Wallace et al, 2013;Payne and Raymond, 2017), monitoring whisking activity in rodents (Knutsen et al, 2005;Perkon et al, 2011;Rigosa et al, 2017), and tracking the position of virtually any species displaying interesting navigation patterns -from bacteria (Berg and Brown, 1972) and invertebrate species (Mazzoni et al, 2005;Garcia-Perez et al, 2005;Mersch et al, 2013;Cavagna et al, 2017), to small terrestrial (Tort et al, 2006;Aragão et al, 2011) and aerial mammals (Tsoar et al, 2011;Yartsev and Ulanovsky, 2013) and birds (Attanasi et al, 2014). In particular, studies in laboratory animals aimed at measuring the neuronal correlates of a given behavior require tools that can accurately track it in time and space and record it along with the underlying neuronal signals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A passive, camera-based head-tracking system for real-time, three-dimensional estimation of head position and orientation in rodents

Vanzella

Grion

Bertolini

et al. 2019

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Tracking head position and orientation in small mammals is crucial for many applications in the field of behavioral neurophysiology, from the study of spatial navigation to the investigation of active sensing and perceptual representations. Many approaches to head tracking exist, but most of them only estimate the 2D coordinates of the head over the plane where the animal navigates. Full reconstruction of the pose of the head in 3D is much more more challenging and has been achieved only in handful of studies, which employed headsets made of multiple LEDs or inertial units. However, these assemblies are rather bulky and need to be powered to operate, which prevents their application in wireless experiments and in the small enclosures often used in perceptual studies. Here we propose an alternative approach, based on passively imaging a lightweight, compact, 3D structure, painted with a pattern of black dots over a white background. By applying a cascade of feature extraction algorithms that progressively refine the detection of the dots and reconstruct their geometry, we developed a tracking method that is highly precise and accurate, as assessed through a battery of validation measurements. We show that this method can be used to study how a rat samples sensory stimuli during a perceptual discrimination task and how a hippocampal place cell represents head position over extremely small spatial scales. Given its minimal encumbrance and wireless nature, our method could be ideal for high-throughput applications, where tens of animals need to be simultaneously and continuously tracked. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Head tracking is crucial in many behavioral neurophysiology studies. Yet reconstruction of the head’s pose in 3D is challenging and typically requires implanting bulky, electrically powered headsets that prevent wireless experiments and are hard to employ in operant boxes. Here we propose an alternative approach, based on passively imaging a compact, 3D dot pattern that, once implanted over the head of a rodent, allows estimating the pose of its head with high precision and accuracy.

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Body language signals for rodent social communication

Ebbesen

Froemke

2021

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

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Dye-enhanced visualization of rat whiskers for behavioral studies

Cited by 9 publications

References 42 publications

Whisker-Mediated Touch System in Rodents: From Neuron to Behavior

Whisker-Mediated Touch System in Rodents: From Neuron to Behavior

A passive, camera-based head-tracking system for real-time, three-dimensional estimation of head position and orientation in rodents

Body language signals for rodent social communication

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