@article {46314,
	title = {Whisking.},
	journal = {Current Biology},
	volume = {25},
	year = {2015},
	month = {2015 Feb 16},
	pages = {R137-40},
	abstract = {<p>Eyes may be {\textquoteright}the window to the soul{\textquoteright} in humans, but whiskers provide a better path to the inner lives of rodents. The brain has remarkable abilities to focus its limited resources on information that matters, while ignoring a cacophony of distractions. While inspecting a visual scene, primates foveate to multiple salient locations, for example mouths and eyes in images of people, and ignore the rest. Similar processes have now been observed and studied in rodents in the context of whisker-based tactile sensation. Rodents use their mechanosensitive whiskers for a diverse range of tactile behaviors such as navigation, object recognition and social interactions. These animals move their whiskers in a purposive manner to locations of interest. The shapes of whiskers, as well as their movements, are exquisitely adapted for tactile exploration in the dark tight burrows where many rodents live. By studying whisker movements during tactile behaviors, we can learn about the tactile information available to rodents through their whiskers and how rodents direct their attention. In this primer, we focus on how the whisker movements of rats and mice are providing clues about the logic of active sensation and the underlying neural mechanisms.</p>
},
	issn = {1879-0445},
	doi = {10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.008},
	author = {Sofroniew, Nicholas J and Svoboda, Karel}
}
@article {45062,
	title = {Natural whisker-guided behavior by head-fixed mice in tactile virtual reality.},
	journal = {Journal of Neuroscience},
	volume = {34},
	year = {2014},
	month = {2014 Jul 16},
	pages = {9537-50},
	abstract = {<p>During many natural behaviors the relevant sensory stimuli and motor outputs are difficult to quantify. Furthermore, the high dimensionality of the space of possible stimuli and movements compounds the problem of experimental control. Head fixation facilitates stimulus control and movement tracking, and can be combined with techniques for recording and manipulating neural activity. However, head-fixed mouse behaviors are typically trained through extensive instrumental conditioning. Here we present a whisker-based, tactile virtual reality system for head-fixed mice running on a spherical treadmill. Head-fixed mice displayed natural movements, including running and rhythmic whisking at 16 Hz. Whisking was centered on a set point that changed in concert with running so that more protracted whisking was correlated with faster running. During turning, whiskers moved in an asymmetric manner, with more retracted whisker positions in the turn direction and protracted whisker movements on the other side. Under some conditions, whisker movements were phase-coupled to strides. We simulated a virtual reality tactile corridor, consisting of two moveable walls controlled in a closed-loop by running speed and direction. Mice used their whiskers to track the walls of the winding corridor without training. Whisker curvature changes, which cause forces in the sensory follicles at the base of the whiskers, were tightly coupled to distance from the walls. Our behavioral system allows for precise control of sensorimotor variables during natural tactile navigation.</p>
},
	issn = {1529-2401},
	doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0712-14.2014},
	author = {Sofroniew, Nicholas J and Cohen, Jeremy D and Lee, Albert K and Svoboda, Karel}
}
