ArticlePLoS computational biology2022
Demonstration of three-dimensional contact point determination and contour reconstruction during active whisking behavior of an awake rat.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Whisker-based pre-neuronal and peripheral encoding of surface stickiness.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Determining modulus of elasticity using finite element analysis and non-destructive testing: Are aquatic animal whiskers stiffer?Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Two modes in the absolute velocity statistics in cautious walks of laboratory rodents.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
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.
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Registered trials
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