Whisker Vibrations and the Activity of Trigeminal Primary Afferents in Response to Airflow.

Rodents are the most commonly studied model system in neuroscience, but surprisingly few studies investigate the natural sensory stimuli that rodent nervous systems evolved to interpret. Even fewer studies examine neural responses to these natural stimuli. Decades of research have investigated the rat vibrissal (whisker) system in the context of direct touch and tactile stimulation, but recent work has shown that rats also use their whiskers to help detect and localize airflow.

Comparing Mouse and Rat Hippocampal Place Cell Activities and Firing Sequences in the Same Environments.

Hippocampal place cells are key to spatial representation and spatial memory processing. They fire at specific locations in a space (place fields) and fire in precise patterns during theta sequences and during ripple-associated replay events. These phenomena have been extensively studied in rats, but to a less extent in mice.

Whiskers aid anemotaxis in rats.

Observation of terrestrial mammals suggests that they can follow the wind (anemotaxis), but the sensory cues underlying this ability have not been studied. We identify a significant contribution to anemotaxis mediated by whiskers (vibrissae), a modality previously studied only in the context of direct tactile contact. Five rats trained on a five-alternative forced-choice airflow localization task exhibited significant performance decrements after vibrissal removal.

Mechanical responses of rat vibrissae to airflow.

The survival of many animals depends in part on their ability to sense the flow of the surrounding fluid medium. To date, however, little is known about how terrestrial mammals sense airflow direction or speed. The present work analyzes the mechanical response of isolated rat macrovibrissae (whiskers) to airflow to assess their viability as flow sensors.