Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat.
The rodent vibrissal (whisker) system has been studied for decades as a model of active touch sensing. There are no sensors along the length of a whisker; all sensing occurs at the whisker base. Therefore, a large open question in many neuroscience studies is how an animal could estimate the three-d...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2022-09-01
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| Series: | PLoS Computational Biology |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007763 |
| _version_ | 1811264776114798592 |
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| author | Lucie A Huet Hannah M Emnett Mitra J Z Hartmann |
| author_facet | Lucie A Huet Hannah M Emnett Mitra J Z Hartmann |
| author_sort | Lucie A Huet |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The rodent vibrissal (whisker) system has been studied for decades as a model of active touch sensing. There are no sensors along the length of a whisker; all sensing occurs at the whisker base. Therefore, a large open question in many neuroscience studies is how an animal could estimate the three-dimensional (3D) location at which a whisker makes contact with an object. In the present work we simulated the shape of a real rat whisker to demonstrate the existence of several unique mappings from triplets of mechanical signals at the whisker base to the three-dimensional whisker-object contact point. We then used high speed video to record whisker deflections as an awake rat whisked against a peg, and used the mechanics resulting from those deflections to extract the contact points along the peg surface. These results demonstrate that measurement of specific mechanical triplets at the base of a biological whisker can enable 3D contact point determination during natural whisking behavior. The approach is viable even though the biological whisker has non-ideal, non-planar curvature, and even given the rat's real-world choices of whisking parameters. Visual intuition for the quality of the approach is provided in a video that shows the contour of the peg gradually emerging during active whisking behavior. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T20:10:25Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-9805c69bb4004f88aa0387a9e4809ba8 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1553-734X 1553-7358 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T20:10:25Z |
| publishDate | 2022-09-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS Computational Biology |
| spelling | doaj.art-9805c69bb4004f88aa0387a9e4809ba82022-12-22T03:18:15ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS Computational Biology1553-734X1553-73582022-09-01189e100776310.1371/journal.pcbi.1007763Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat.Lucie A HuetHannah M EmnettMitra J Z HartmannThe rodent vibrissal (whisker) system has been studied for decades as a model of active touch sensing. There are no sensors along the length of a whisker; all sensing occurs at the whisker base. Therefore, a large open question in many neuroscience studies is how an animal could estimate the three-dimensional (3D) location at which a whisker makes contact with an object. In the present work we simulated the shape of a real rat whisker to demonstrate the existence of several unique mappings from triplets of mechanical signals at the whisker base to the three-dimensional whisker-object contact point. We then used high speed video to record whisker deflections as an awake rat whisked against a peg, and used the mechanics resulting from those deflections to extract the contact points along the peg surface. These results demonstrate that measurement of specific mechanical triplets at the base of a biological whisker can enable 3D contact point determination during natural whisking behavior. The approach is viable even though the biological whisker has non-ideal, non-planar curvature, and even given the rat's real-world choices of whisking parameters. Visual intuition for the quality of the approach is provided in a video that shows the contour of the peg gradually emerging during active whisking behavior.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007763 |
| spellingShingle | Lucie A Huet Hannah M Emnett Mitra J Z Hartmann Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat. PLoS Computational Biology |
| title | Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat. |
| title_full | Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat. |
| title_fullStr | Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat. |
| title_short | Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat. |
| title_sort | demonstration of three dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007763 |
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