texture coding in the rat whisker system slip-stick versus differential resonance鼠须系统中的纹理编码slip-stick与微分共振.pdfVIP

PLoS BIOLOGY Texture Coding in the Rat Whisker System: Slip-Stick Versus Differential Resonance 1¤a 2 2 2 1 2¤b* Jason Wolfe , Dan N. Hill , Sohrab Pahlavan , Patrick J. Drew , David Kleinfeld , Daniel E. Feldman 1 Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America, 2 Section on Neurobiology, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America Rats discriminate surface textures using their whiskers (vibrissae), but how whiskers extract texture information, and how this information is encoded by the brain, are not known. In the resonance model, whisker motion across different textures excites mechanical resonance in distinct subsets of whiskers, due to variation across whiskers in resonance frequency, which varies with whisker length. Texture information is therefore encoded by the spatial pattern of activated whiskers. In the competing kinetic signature model, different textures excite resonance equally across whiskers, and instead, texture is encoded by characteristic, nonuniform temporal patterns of whisker motion. We tested these models by measuring whisker motion in awake, behaving rats whisking in air and onto sandpaper surfaces. Resonant motion was prominent during whisking in air, with fundamental frequencies ranging from approximately 35 Hz for the long Delta whisker to approximately 110 Hz for the shorter D3 whisker. Resonant vibrations also occurred while whisking against textures, but the amplitude of resonanc