Interactions of rat whiskers with air currents: implications for flow sensing
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1
Elmhurst College, Department of Physics and Biocenter Oulu,, United States
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2
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, United States
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3
Elmhurst College, United States
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4
Northwestern University, United States
Many species of mammals have a regular array of facial whiskers (mystacial vibrissae) that emerge from sensory follicles embedded in the cheek. Each whisker-follicle pair constitutes a highly sensitive mechano-transducer, and the whiskers are often used for the tactile exploration of objects. Rats, for example, actively sweep their whiskers against objects between 5 - 12 Hz in a behavior called "whisking." Using only whisking movements, a rat can tactually extract object features such as size, shape, orientation and texture. However, many animals with large and prominent vibrissae, such as dogs, do not actively whisk. Why, then, are the vibrissae so prominent, and so regularly arranged, even in species that do not actively whisk? We reasoned that animal nervous systems have evolved around the need to find food, water, and mates. For most mammals, the search for these resources is largely olfactory, requiring the detection of airborne odorants which are usually present at very low concentrations. The dispersal of an airborne odorant is strongly dependent on local air currents, which are generally turbulent and have complex flow patterns. Olfactory localization thus requires an animal to detect the chemical odorant, to sense wind direction, and then to integrate these chemical and fluid dynamic cues to make a decision on where to move next. We therefore hypothesized that in addition to their direct tactile function, whiskers may also serve as sensitive detectors of air currents, and that the rat’s vibrissal array can be used to measure information about local airflow. To test this hypothesis, we measured the interactions of vibrissae with air currents in anesthetized rats. Turbulent air streams were blown onto the vibrissae of an anesthetized rat at various angles. Whisker deflections were measured using high-speed video cameras at a frame rate of 1KHz. Whisker kinematic parameters were measured and compared across vibrissae on both sides of the face. Our preliminary results show significant differences in response frequency and amplitude across the right and left sides of the vibrissal array depending on the orientation of the air stream. We discuss these results in the context of odor localization behaviors. This work was supported by NSF awards IIS-0613568 and IOS-0818414 (MJZH) and an Elmhurst College Summer Research Collaboration Grant (VG, MM).
Conference:
Computational and Systems Neuroscience 2010, Salt Lake City, UT, United States, 25 Feb - 2 Mar, 2010.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster session III
Citation:
Gopal
V,
Kim
M,
Chiapetta
C,
Russ
J,
Meaden
M and
Hartmann
M
(2010). Interactions of rat whiskers with air currents: implications for flow sensing.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Computational and Systems Neuroscience 2010.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.03.00281
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Received:
05 Mar 2010;
Published Online:
05 Mar 2010.
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Correspondence:
Venkatesh Gopal, Elmhurst College, Department of Physics and Biocenter Oulu,, Elmhurst, United States, vgopal@elmhurst.edu