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Tactile and Chemical Senses

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Tactile senses encompass touch, temperature, and pain, each mediated by specific receptors. Touch receptors detect mechanical energy or pressure against the skin. Sensory fibers from these receptors enter the spinal cord and relay information to the brain stem. Here, most fibers cross over to the opposite side of the brain. The touch information then moves to the thalamus, which projects a map of the body's surface onto the somatosensory areas of the parietal lobes in the cerebral cortex.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 21, 2026

Whisker-signaled Eyeblink Classical Conditioning in Head-fixed Mice

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Published on: March 30, 2016

Tactile object localization by anticipatory whisker motion.

Jakob Voigts¹, David H Herman², Tansu Celikel³

¹Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Plasticity, USC, Los Angeles, California;

Journal of Neurophysiology

|October 24, 2014

Summary

Mice precisely adjust their whisker movements to expected object distances, not current sensory feedback. This predictive motor control uses whisker contacts as an error signal to refine object location accuracy.

Keywords:

active perception barrel cortex sensorimotor whisking

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Last Updated: Apr 21, 2026

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Sensory-motor systems
Animal behavior

Background:

Rodents utilize rhythmic whisker protractions for spatial object localization.
Whisker protraction amplitude decreases upon object contact, promoting light touch sensing.
The neural mechanisms linking sensory input to motor pattern changes in whisking remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how sensory input influences the motor patterns of rodent whisking.
To determine the role of expected object location in modulating whisker movements.
To elucidate the sensory feedback mechanisms underlying whisker-based object exploration.

Main Methods:

High-speed imaging of whisking behavior in mice.
Simultaneous measurement of whisker contacts and whisking motion.
Analysis of whisker protraction targeting and modulation in response to object presence and position.

Main Results:

Mice demonstrate precise targeting of whisker protractions to expected object distances.
Whisker movement modulation is predictive and independent of immediate sensory input.
Motor pattern adjustments remain stable across whisking cycles, even with altered object positions.

Conclusions:

Whisker protraction is pre-modulated based on expected object locations, not solely on real-time sensory feedback.
Whisker contacts function as an error signal, encoding mismatches between expected and actual object positions.
This predictive motor control strategy enhances the accuracy of object localization in rodents.