Abstract
Tactile perception in rodents depends on simultaneous, multi-whisker contacts with objects. Although it is known that neurons in secondary somatosensory cortex (wS2) respond to individual deflections of many whiskers, wS2′s precise function remains unknown. The convergence of information from multiple whiskers into wS2 neurons suggests that they are good candidates for integrating multi-whisker information. Here, we apply stimulation patterns with rich dynamics simultaneously to 24 macro-vibrissae of rats while recording large populations of single neurons. Varying inter-whisker correlations without changing single whisker statistics, we observe pronounced supra-linear multi-whisker integration. Using novel analysis methods, we show that continuous multi-whisker movements contribute to the firing of wS2 neurons over long temporal windows, facilitating spatio-temporal integration. In contrast, primary cortex (wS1) neurons encode fine features of whisker movements on precise temporal scales. These results provide the first description of wS2′s representation during multi-whisker stimulation and outline its specialized role in parallel to wS1 tactile processing.
Highlights
Tactile perception in rodents depends on simultaneous, multi-whisker contacts with objects
While it has been reported that wS2 neurons respond to individual deflections of many single whiskers, some with latencies comparable to wS1 cells[6], it is still unknown how they respond during continuous multi-whisker stimulation
This observation could be due to a real difference between the whisker movements coded in the two regions or reflect a difference in the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of the responses in the two regions
Summary
Tactile perception in rodents depends on simultaneous, multi-whisker contacts with objects. Primary cortex (wS1) neurons encode fine features of whisker movements on precise temporal scales These results provide the first description of wS2′s representation during multi-whisker stimulation and outline its specialized role in parallel to wS1 tactile processing. Choice-related activity in wS2 is more predominant than it is in wS1, it is unknown whether the single whisker periodic deflection used in these studies adequately engages wS2′s sensory representation With such a stimulus, there is no global or multi-whisker component, which could be an important factor in delineating wS2′s sensory function[6,15]. Correlated whisker movements produce larger supra-linearities in the responses of wS2 neurons than seen in wS1 These specialized and complementary cortical representations can support the large range of tactile discrimination abilities that rats are known to possess and have long been hypothesized to exist along the somatosensory pathway
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