Whisking asymmetry signals motor preparation and the behavioral state of mice

Abstract

A central function of the brain is to plan, predict and imagine the effect of movement in a dynamically changing environment. Here we show that the position of the vibrissae, sets of mobile tactile sensors on each side of the face, reflects the behavioral state and predicts the movement of mice, head-fixed in a plus-maze floating on air. Whisker position and whisking as well as nose position signal whether the animal is moving backward or forward, turning right or left, standing still or moving, expecting reward or licking. Surprisingly, the relationship between bilateral whisker position and behavioral state has little to do with tactile input from the whiskers. Thus, in addition to a tactile exploratory function, these mobile sensors on the face of a mouse signal the behavioral and motor preparation state of the animal.

The sensorimotor strategies and neuronal representations of tactile shape discrimination in mice

“…The reverse was true for C3. The location that mice chose to sample even in the absence of contacts was also informative about their upcoming choice (Supplemental Fig 3D-F; Dominiak et al, 2019).…”

Real-Time Closed-Loop Feedback in Behavioral Time Scales Using DeepLabCut

“…After subcutaneous lidocaine injection, skin and fascia were removed from the skull. A lightweight aluminum head post was attached to the skull using a Rely-X (3M) cement, followed in some cases by Jet acrylic black cement (Dominiak et al, 2019;Sehara et al, 2019).…”

“…In the last 20 years, multiple research groups have reported increasingly sophisticated, easy-to-use tools for automated annotation of video data of animal behavior (Knutsen et al, 2005;Voigts et al, 2008;Perkon et al, 2011;Clack et al, 2012;Ohayon et al, 2013;Giovannucci et al, 2018;Dominiak et al, 2019;Vanzella et al, 2019;Betting et al, 2020;Petersen et al, 2020). One natural extension of this ability has been to apply these algorithms for on-line, closed-loop paradigms, where changes in behavior of the animal are detected as rapidly as possible, and the behavior is used to modify or manipulate the brain, the virtual environment or the context of behavior.…”

“…Traditionally, video data have been analyzed manually. More recently, various algorithms have been developed for automating movement detection (Knutsen et al, 2005;Voigts et al, 2008;Perkon et al, 2011;Clack et al, 2012;Ohayon et al, 2013;Giovannucci et al, 2018;Dominiak et al, 2019;Vanzella et al, 2019;Betting et al, 2020;Petersen et al, 2020). With the development of DeepLabCut, a marker-less pose-estimation toolkit based on deep learning , computer vision approaches are being used for monitoring poses of animals and for tracking the movement of virtually any part of the body.…”

Serotonergic development of active sensing

“…During active sensing, the position of sensory organs is adaptively controlled based on sensory and contextual information as well as learned task requirements (Nelson and MacIver, 2006;Celikel and Sakmann, 2007;Morillon et al, 2015;Dominiak et al, 2019). In the whisker system, for example, the pattern of whisking during object localization is modulated by whisker touch as animals protract their whiskers towards the presumed location of the tactile target of interest (Voigts et al, 2015).…”