Abstract
BackgroundStudies in tactile discrimination agree that rats are able to learn a rough-smooth discrimination task by actively touching (whisking) objects with their vibrissae. In particular, we focus on recent evidence of how neurons at different levels of the sensory pathway carry information about tactile stimuli. Here, we analyzed the multifiber afferent discharge of one vibrissal nerve during active whisking. Vibrissae movements were induced by electrical stimulation of motor branches of the facial nerve. We used sandpapers of different grain size as roughness discrimination surfaces and we also consider the change of vibrissal slip-resistance as a way to improve tactile information acquisition. The amplitude of afferent activity was analyzed according to its Root Mean Square value (RMS). The comparisons among experimental situation were quantified by using the information theory.ResultsWe found that the change of the vibrissal slip-resistance is a way to improve the roughness discrimination of surfaces. As roughness increased, the RMS values also increased in almost all cases. In addition, we observed a better discrimination performance in the retraction phase (maximum amount of information).ConclusionsThe evidence of amplitude changes due to roughness surfaces and slip-resistance levels allows to speculate that texture information is slip-resistance dependent at peripheral level.
Highlights
Studies in tactile discrimination agree that rats are able to learn a rough-smooth discrimination task by actively touching objects with their vibrissae
We showed that the afferent activity amplitude (RMS values) could be related to the physical properties of the surfaces [9]
We have analyzed the afferent activity of a single vibrissa innervation in order to relate the information obtained to the roughness of surfaces
Summary
Studies in tactile discrimination agree that rats are able to learn a rough-smooth discrimination task by actively touching (whisking) objects with their vibrissae. We used sandpapers of different grain size as roughness discrimination surfaces and we consider the change of vibrissal slip-resistance as a way to improve tactile information acquisition. The amplitude of afferent activity was analyzed according to its Root Mean Square value (RMS). We have analyzed the afferent activity of a single vibrissa innervation (average activity) in order to relate the information obtained to the roughness of surfaces. For this purpose, we have calculated the amplitude of afferent activity by using Root Mean Square values (RMS) obtained during protraction and retraction phases. The differences among experimental conditions were quantified through the maximum amount of information by using Information Theory [10,11]
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