Pre-neuronal morphological coding

 In the vibrissal system, touch information is conveyed by a receptor-less whisker hair to follicle mechanoreceptors, which then provide input to the brain. We examined whether any processing, i.e., meaningful transformation, occurs in the whisker itself. Using high-speed videography and tracking the movements of whiskers in anesthetized and behaving rats we found that whisker-related morphological phase planes, based on angular and curvature variables, can represent the coordinates of object position after contact in a reliable manner, in agreement with theoretical predictions. 

By tracking exposed follicles we show that the follicle-whisker junction is rigid, which enables direct readout of whisker morphological coding by mechanoreceptors. Finally, we found that our behaving rats pushed against objects during localization in a way that induced meaningful morphological coding and in parallel improved their localization performance, which suggests a role for pre-neuronal morphological computation in active vibrissal touch.

 

Relevant papers

• 

  Bagdasarian, K; Szwed, M; Knutsen, PM; Deutsch, D; Derdikman, D; Pietr, M; Simony, E; Ahissar, E (2013). Pre-neuronal morphological processing of object location by individual whiskers.  Nature Neuroscience. 16:622-+.

 

Back to Research Overview