Cortical Coding of Whisking Phase during Surface Whisking.

ABSTRACT: In rodent whisker sensation, whisker position signals, including whisking phase, are integrated with touch signals to enable spatially accurate tactile perception, but other functions of phase coding are unclear. We investigate how phase coding affects the neural coding of surface features during surface whisking. In mice performing rough-smooth discrimination, S1 units exhibit much stronger phase tuning during surface whisking than in prior studies of whisking in air. Among putative pyramidal cells, preferred phase tiles phase space, but protraction phases are strongly over-represented. Fast-spiking units are nearly all protraction tuned. This protraction bias increases the coding of stick-slip whisker events during protraction, suggesting that surface features are preferentially encoded

SUBMITTER: Isett BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7438249 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature