Topic: whisker system

It is common for animals to use self-generated movements to actively sense the surrounding environment. For instance, rodents rhythmically move their whiskers to explore the space close to their body. The mouse whisker system has become a standard model to study active sensing and sensorimotor integration through feedback loops. In this work, we developed a bioinspired spiking neural network model of the sensorimotor peripheral whisker system, modelling trigeminal ganglion, trigeminal nuclei, facial nuclei, and central pattern generator neuronal populations. This network was embedded in a virt

Rhythmic activity in the brain has been reported in relation to a wide range of cognitive processes. Changes in the rhythmic activity have been related to pathological states. These observations raise the question of the origin of these rhythms: can the mechanisms responsible for generation of these rhythms and that allow the propagation of the rhythmic signal be acquired via a process of learning? In my talk I will focus on spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP) and examine under what conditions this unsupervised learning rule can facilitate the propagation of rhythmic activity downstream i

The tactile system is capable of discerning various textures, the distance to an object, shape, or even the velocity of a moving object. The versatility of this system is due to, at least partially, the heterogeneous population of mechanoreceptors that lies within the skin. In the whisker system this is achieved via three three types of mechanoreceptors (MR) in the whisker follicle: Slowly Adapting type 1 (SA1), Slowly Adapting type 2 (SA2), and Rapidly Adapting (RA) [1]. In this study, we aim to understand the role of these different types of MRs in stimulus representation. We fit Adaptive Ex