Pre-neuronal morphological processing of object location by individual whiskers

Knarik Bagdasarian; Marcin Szwed; Per Magne Knutsen; Dudi Deutsch; Dori Derdikman; MacIej Pietr; Erez Simony; Ehud Ahissar

doi:10.1038/nn.3378

Pre-neuronal morphological processing of object location by individual whiskers

Knarik Bagdasarian, Marcin Szwed, Per Magne Knutsen, Dudi Deutsch, Dori Derdikman, MacIej Pietr, Erez Simony, Ehud Ahissar

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In the vibrissal system, touch information is conveyed by a receptorless whisker hair to follicle mechanoreceptors, which then provide input to the brain. We examined whether any processing, that is, meaningful transformation, occurs in the whisker itself. Using high-speed videography and tracking the movements of whiskers in anesthetized and behaving rats, we found that whisker-related morphological phase planes, based on angular and curvature variables, can represent the coordinates of object position after contact in a reliable manner, consistent with theoretical predictions. By tracking exposed follicles, we found that the follicle-whisker junction is rigid, which enables direct readout of whisker morphological coding by mechanoreceptors. Finally, we found that our behaving rats pushed their whiskers against objects during localization in a way that induced meaningful morphological coding and, in parallel, improved their localization performance, which suggests a role for pre-neuronal morphological computation in active vibrissal touch.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	622-631
Number of pages	10
Journal	Nature Neuroscience
Volume	16
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3378
State	Published - May 2013
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank D. Goldian and S. Haidarliu for technical assistance, N. Rubin for programming, B. Schick for reviewing, M. Hartmann and J. Solomon for critically reading the manuscript and for extensive and helpful discussions, and C. Moore, J. Ritt, L. Gomez, S. Barash and G. Bi for helpful suggestions. The article is dedicated to our late friend and colleague Maciej Pietr for his significant contribution to this work. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant 749/10), the Minerva Foundation funded by the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research, the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (grant 2011432), the Ministry of Science and Technology (Israel), the Ministry of Research (Taiwan), and the Chief Scientist, Israeli Ministry of Health. K.B. acknowledges support by the KAMEA program administered by the Ministry of Absorption (Israel). P.M.K. was supported by a Long-Term Fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program. E.A. holds the Helen Diller Family Professorial Chair of Neurobiology.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Neuroscience

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title = "Pre-neuronal morphological processing of object location by individual whiskers",

abstract = "In the vibrissal system, touch information is conveyed by a receptorless whisker hair to follicle mechanoreceptors, which then provide input to the brain. We examined whether any processing, that is, meaningful transformation, occurs in the whisker itself. Using high-speed videography and tracking the movements of whiskers in anesthetized and behaving rats, we found that whisker-related morphological phase planes, based on angular and curvature variables, can represent the coordinates of object position after contact in a reliable manner, consistent with theoretical predictions. By tracking exposed follicles, we found that the follicle-whisker junction is rigid, which enables direct readout of whisker morphological coding by mechanoreceptors. Finally, we found that our behaving rats pushed their whiskers against objects during localization in a way that induced meaningful morphological coding and, in parallel, improved their localization performance, which suggests a role for pre-neuronal morphological computation in active vibrissal touch.",

author = "Knarik Bagdasarian and Marcin Szwed and Knutsen, {Per Magne} and Dudi Deutsch and Dori Derdikman and MacIej Pietr and Erez Simony and Ehud Ahissar",

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AU - Pietr, MacIej

AU - Simony, Erez

AU - Ahissar, Ehud

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Pre-neuronal morphological processing of object location by individual whiskers

Abstract

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