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Neural encoding schemes of tactile information in afferent activity of the vibrissal system

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Abstract

When rats acquire sensory information by actively moving their vibrissae, a neural code is manifested at different levels of the sensory system. Behavioral studies in tactile discrimination agree that rats can distinguish different roughness surfaces by whisking their vibrissae. The present study explores the existence of neural encoding in the afferent activity of one vibrissal nerve. Two neural encoding schemes based on “events” were proposed (cumulative event count and median inter-event time). The events were detected by using an event detection algorithm based on multiscale decomposition of the signal (Continuous Wavelet Transform). The encoding schemes were quantitatively evaluated through the maximum amount of information which was obtained by the Shannon’s mutual information formula. Moreover, the effect of difference distances between rat snout and swept surfaces on the information values was also studied. We found that roughness information was encoded by events of 0.8 ms duration in the cumulative event count and event of 1.0 to 1.6 ms duration in the median inter-event count. It was also observed that an extreme decrease of the distance between rat snout and swept surfaces significantly reduces the information values and the capacity to discriminate among the sweep situations.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by grants from Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCYT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), and Consejo de Investigaciones de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (CIUNT), as well as with Institutional funds from Instituto Superior de Investigaciones Biológicas (INSIBIO).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Medios e Interfases (LAMEIN), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología (FACET), Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT), Tucumán, Argentina

    Fernando D. Farfán & Carmelo J. Felice

  2. Instituto Superior de Investigaciones Biológicas (INSIBIO), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Fernando D. Farfán & Carmelo J. Felice

  3. Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Facultad de Medicina (FM), Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT), Tucumán, Argentina

    Ana L. Albarracín

Authors
  1. Fernando D. Farfán
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  2. Ana L. Albarracín
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  3. Carmelo J. Felice
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fernando D. Farfán.

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Action Editor: Simon R Schultz

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Additional File 1

Information values versus window length where the cumulative event count is done. The information values were obtained considering the all possible pairwise comparisons. The events depicted in these figures were of 0.8, 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 ms durations. These results were obtained at slip-resistance level 1. (EMF 150 kb)

Additional File 2

Idem to Additional File 1 but at slip-resistance level 2. (EMF 172 kb)

Additional File 3

Idem to Additional File 1 but at slip-resistance level 3. (EMF 173 kb)

Additional File 4

Information values obtained for all stimulus pairwise at different slip-resistance levels. Event duration considered for these calculations were of 0.6 to 2.0 ms. The remaining event durations showed no significant information values. (EMF 102 kb)

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Farfán, F.D., Albarracín, A.L. & Felice, C.J. Neural encoding schemes of tactile information in afferent activity of the vibrissal system. J Comput Neurosci 34, 89–101 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-012-0408-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-012-0408-6

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