ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2008
Biomechanics of the vibrissa motor plant in rat: rhythmic whisking consists of triphasic neuromuscular activity.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers.
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Who cites it
86 citing papers in PubMed, 154 citations in OpenAlex.
- Theory and evidence of amplitude control by frequency detuning in a coupled neuronal oscillator system.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Diverse Neuronal Activity in Barrel Cortex During Self-Grooming and Whisking in Mice.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Biomechanical simplification of the motor control of whisking.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Diversity in Whisking-Related Dynamics of Layer 5 Neurons in the Motor Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Club-like receptors respond to light touch but not to whisking.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Multiple cortical systems influence a single vibrissa muscle.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Three-dimensional architecture and linearized mapping of vibrissa follicle afferents.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The cerebellum engages multiple pre-motor pathways through a divergent-convergent architecture to shape whisker dynamics.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2025Article
- Low- and high-level coordination of orofacial motor actions.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2023Review
- A change in behavioral state switches the pattern of motor output that underlies rhythmic head and orofacial movements.Current biology : CB · 2023Article
- Global and local neuronal coding of tactile information in the barrel cortex.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Theory of hierarchically organized neuronal oscillator dynamics that mediate rodent rhythmic whisking.Neuron · 2022Article
- Body language signals for rodent social communication.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2021Review
- Of mice and monkeys: Somatosensory processing in two prominent animal models.Progress in neurobiology · 2021Review
- Article
- The Sensorimotor Basis of Whisker-Guided Anteroposterior Object Localization in Head-Fixed Mice.Current biology : CB · 2019Article
- Quantification of vibrissal mechanical properties across the rat mystacial pad.Journal of neurophysiology · 2019Article
- Coding of whisker motion across the mouse face.eLife · 2019Article
- Toward the Bionic Face: A Novel Neuroprosthetic Device Paradigm for Facial Reanimation Consisting of Neural Blockade and Functional Electrical Stimulation.Plastic and reconstructive surgery · 2019Article
- The mesencephalic-hypoglossal nuclei loop as a possible central pattern generator for rhythmical whisking in rats.Experimental brain research · 2018Article
26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The biomechanics of a motor plant constrain the behavioral strategies that an animal has available to extract information from its environment. We used the rat vibrissa system as a model for active sensing and determined the pattern of muscle activity that drives rhythmic exploratory whisking. Our approach made use of electromyography to measure the activation of all relevant muscles in both head-fixed and unrestrained rats and two-dimensional imaging to monitor the position of the vibrissae in head-fixed rats. Our essential finding is that the periodic motion of the vibrissae and mystacial pad during whisking results from three phases of muscle activity. First, the vibrissae are thrust forward as the rostral extrinsic muscle, musculus (m.) nasalis, contracts to pull the pad and initiate protraction. Second, late in protraction, the intrinsic muscles pivot the vibrissae farther forward. Third, retraction involves the cessation of m. nasalis and intrinsic muscle activity and the contraction of the caudal extrinsic muscles m. nasolabialis and m. maxillolabialis to pull the pad and the vibrissae backward. We developed a biomechanical model of the whisking motor plant that incorporates the measured muscular mechanics along with movement vectors observed from direct muscle stimulation in anesthetized rats. The results of simulations of the model quantify how the combination of extrinsic and intrinsic muscle activity leads to an enhanced range of vibrissa motion than would be available from the intrinsic muscles alone.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.