Whisker-based pre-neuronal and peripheral encoding of surface stickiness

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Sensory Systems
• Mechanobiology

Background:

• Texture perception is crucial for tactile exploration.
• Whiskers are key sensory organs in rodents, primarily studied for coarseness detection.
• Surface stickiness influences whisker-surface mechanical interactions and neuronal responses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if and how whisker-surface interactions convey information about surface stickiness.
• To determine the neural representation of stickiness in mechanosensory neurons.

Main Methods:

• Developed a 3D whisker tracking system for texture sensing.
• Characterized whisker-surface interactions on surfaces with varying stickiness, coarseness, and position.
• Recorded responses of whisker follicle innervating neurons in the trigeminal ganglion.

Main Results:

• Whisker bending, twisting, and roll distinguished between surfaces of different stickiness.
• Rates and amplitudes of stick-slip events at the whisker tip correlated with surface stickiness.
• Specific mechanosensory neuron firing rates differentiated between high and low stickiness surfaces.

Conclusions:

• The rodent whisker system can extract information about surface stickiness.
• Mechanical cues from whisker-surface interactions, including stick-slip dynamics, are critical for encoding stickiness.
• This study demonstrates the availability of stickiness information within the whisker sensory system.