Artificial spatiotemporal touch inputs reveal complementary decoding in neocortical neurons.

ABSTRACT: Investigations of the mechanisms of touch perception and decoding has been hampered by difficulties in achieving invariant patterns of skin sensor activation. To obtain reproducible spatiotemporal patterns of activation of sensory afferents, we used an artificial fingertip equipped with an array of neuromorphic sensors. The artificial fingertip was used to transduce real-world haptic stimuli into spatiotemporal patterns of spikes. These spike patterns were delivered to the skin afferents of the second digit of rats via an array of stimulation electrodes. Combined with low-noise intra- and extracellular recordings from neocortical neurons in vivo, this approach provided a previously inaccessible high resolution analysis of the representation of tactile information in the neocortical neurona

SUBMITTER: Oddo CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5379202 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature