Tapered whiskers are required for active tactile sensation

Hires, Samuel Andrew; Pammer, Lorenz; Svoboda, Karel; Golomb, David

doi:10.7554/elife.01350

Cited by 67 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Making the standard assumption that a whisker is linearly tapered (Ibrahim and Wright, 1975;Williams and Kramer, 2010;Quist et al, 2011;Hires et al, 2013) and can be modeled as a Notice that there is small variability in airflow speed for different whiskers, which is observed as small shifts in the placement of the data points on the x-axis. In both A and B, variability in bending direction is larger for shorter whiskers than for longer whiskers because measurement error was greater for smaller deflections.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanical responses of rat vibrissae to airflow

Graff

Hartmann

2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

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The survival of many animals depends in part on their ability to sense the flow of the surrounding fluid medium. To date, however, little is known about how terrestrial mammals sense airflow direction or speed. The present work analyzes the mechanical response of isolated rat macrovibrissae (whiskers) to airflow to assess their viability as flow sensors. Results show that the whisker bends primarily in the direction of airflow and vibrates around a new average position at frequencies related to its resonant modes. The bending direction is not affected by airflow speed or by geometric properties of the whisker. In contrast, the bending magnitude increases strongly with airflow speed and with the ratio of the whisker's arc length to base diameter. To a much smaller degree, the bending magnitude also varies with the orientation of the whisker's intrinsic curvature relative to the direction of airflow. These results are used to predict the mechanical responses of vibrissae to airflow across the entire array, and to show that the rat could actively adjust the airflow data that the vibrissae acquire by changing the orientation of its whiskers. We suggest that, like the whiskers of pinnipeds, the macrovibrissae of terrestrial mammals are multimodal sensors -able to sense both airflow and touch -and that they may play a particularly important role in anemotaxis.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanical responses of rat vibrissae to airflow

Graff

Hartmann

2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…Because each whisker is held tightly by its follicle [16], and because the base of a whisker is relatively stiff [15,24–28], the follicle and the proximal segment of the whisker move approximately as a single unit (a rigid body) relative to the head. Figure 1c describes the time-dependent position and orientation of this unit in a head-centered reference frame.…”

Section: The Geometry Of Whiskingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The quasistatic forces associated with bending are slower, but generally larger in magnitude than the transient forces associated with the collision [34–36]. Figure 3a,b provides 2D and 3D illustrations, respectively, of the mechanical signals at the base of the whisker generated by contact [11••,24,33,37–41]. …”

Section: The Mechanics Of Quasi-static Contactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whisking mechanics and active sensing

Bush

Solla

Hartmann

2016

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

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We describe recent advances in quantifying the three-dimensional (3D) geometry and mechanics of whisking. Careful delineation of relevant 3D reference frames reveals important geometric and mechanical distinctions between the localization problem (‘where’ is an object) and the feature extraction problem (‘what’ is an object). Head-centered and resting-whisker reference frames lend themselves to quantifying temporal and kinematic cues used for object localization. The whisking-centered reference frame lends itself to quantifying the contact mechanics likely associated with feature extraction. We offer the ‘windowed sampling’ hypothesis for active sensing: that rats can estimate an object’s spatial features by integrating mechanical information across whiskers during brief (25–60 ms) windows of ‘haptic enclosure’ with the whiskers, a motion that resembles a hand grasp.

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“…Specifically, about half of the units throughout the depth of cortex have a spike rate that is significantly modulated by whisking 23 . The origin of this sensitivity to position is unclear, but may rely on the distribution of forces on stretch receptors in the follicle 29,30 . The phase component of the position signal, found by warping the period of each whisking cycle and discarding the amplitude and midpoint of the whisk 28 , was found to be derived from peripheral reafference 31,32 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

More than a rhythm of life: breathing as a binder of orofacial sensation

et al. 2014

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When rodents engage in the exploration of novel stimuli, breathing occurs at an accelerated rate that is synchronous with whisking. We review the recently observed relationships between breathing and the sensations of smell and vibrissa-based touch. We consider the hypothesis that the breathing rhythm serves not only as a motor drive signal but also as a common clock that binds these two senses into a common percept. This possibility may be extended to include taste through the coordination of licking with breathing. The status of experimental evidence that pertains to this hypothesis is evaluated.

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Tapered whiskers are required for active tactile sensation

Cited by 67 publications

References 51 publications

Mechanical responses of rat vibrissae to airflow

Mechanical responses of rat vibrissae to airflow

Whisking mechanics and active sensing

More than a rhythm of life: breathing as a binder of orofacial sensation

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