TY - JOUR
T1 - Pre-neuronal morphological processing of object location by individual whiskers
AU - Bagdasarian, Knarik
AU - Szwed, Marcin
AU - Knutsen, Per Magne
AU - Deutsch, Dudi
AU - Derdikman, Dori
AU - Pietr, Maciej
AU - Simony, Erez
AU - Ahissar, Ehud
N1 - Israel Science Foundation [749/10]; Minerva Foundation; Federal German Ministry for Education and Research; United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation [2011432]; Ministry of Science and Technology (Israel); Ministry of Research (Taiwan); Israeli Ministry of Health; KAMEA program; Long-Term Fellowship from the Human Frontier Science ProgramWe thank D. Goldian and S. Haidarliu for technical assistance, N. Rubin for programming, B. Schick for reviewing, M. Hartmann and J. Solomon for critically reading the manuscript and for extensive and helpful discussions, and C. Moore, J. Ritt, L. Gomez, S. Barash and G. Bi for helpful suggestions. The article is dedicated to our late friend and colleague Maciej Pietr for his significant contribution to this work. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant 749/10), the Minerva Foundation funded by the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research, the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (grant 2011432), the Ministry of Science and Technology (Israel), the Ministry of Research (Taiwan), and the Chief Scientist, Israeli Ministry of Health. K.B. acknowledges support by the KAMEA program administered by the Ministry of Absorption (Israel). P.M.K. was supported by a Long-Term Fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program. E.A. holds the Helen Diller Family Professorial Chair of Neurobiology.
PY - 2013/5
Y1 - 2013/5
N2 - In the vibrissal system, touch information is conveyed by a receptorless whisker hair to follicle mechanoreceptors, which then provide input to the brain. We examined whether any processing, that is, 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, consistent with theoretical predictions. By tracking exposed follicles, we found 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 their whiskers 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.
AB - In the vibrissal system, touch information is conveyed by a receptorless whisker hair to follicle mechanoreceptors, which then provide input to the brain. We examined whether any processing, that is, 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, consistent with theoretical predictions. By tracking exposed follicles, we found 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 their whiskers 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84876906267&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/nn.3378
DO - 10.1038/nn.3378
M3 - مقالة
C2 - 23563582
SN - 1097-6256
VL - 16
SP - 622
EP - 631
JO - Nature Neuroscience
JF - Nature Neuroscience
IS - 5
ER -