Topic: mouse whisker system

In the mouse whisker system, somatosensory thalamus outputs to primary and secondary vibrissal somatosensory cortices (vS1 and vS2), as well as the dysgranular zone, a strip of cortex between the vibrissal and forepaw primary somatosensory cortices. Despite extensive studies of vS1 and vS2, the dysgranular zone’s response to whisker touch remains unknown. Vibrissal S1 sends outputs to three areas within the dysgranular zone: the anteromedial (AM), centromedial (CM), and posteromedial (PM) areas, each of which shows robust responses to whisker touch. We trained mice trimmed to two whiskers to a

The primary somatosensory area of the mammalian cerebral cortex is known to play a key role in tactile sensory processing and touch perception, which may not be restricted to an efficient analysis of the incoming sensory flow. Indeed, the neocortex is thought to be capable of generating predictions about future events based on the context, our past experiences and current motor actions. According to predictive coding theories, sensory perception would rely on the continuous comparison of expected sensory inputs with those actually received, and the error signal generated in case of mismatch be