Quantifying the three-dimensional facial morphology of the laboratory rat with a focus on the vibrissae
Quantifying the three-dimensional facial morphology of the laboratory rat with a focus on the vibrissae
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0194981
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发表时间：
2018-04-05
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Hartmann, Mitra J. Z.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Belli, Hayley M.;Bresee, Chris S.;Hartmann, Mitra J. Z.
动物面部的形态对它所能获得的感官信息有很大的影响。在这里，我们量化的大鼠的颅感觉结构的安排，特别强调的mystyrus vibrissae（胡须）。几乎所有的哺乳动物都有触须，它们通常在脸上排成行和列。触须具有多种重要的行为功能，包括导航、攀爬、尾流跟踪、趋风性和社会互动。然而，迄今为止，很少有研究比较不同物种的触须阵列的形态，或描述相对于其他面部感觉结构的触须的安排。为数不多的研究，确实存在利用晶须的网格状安排，以量化阵列形态的行和列的身份。然而，依靠胡须身份对比较研究提出了挑战，因为不同的物种有不同的胡须数量和排列。目前的工作介绍了一种方法来量化触须阵列形态的行数和列数无关，并量化阵列的位置相对于其他感官结构。我们使用晶须基点的三维位置作为基本参数来生成描述每个晶须的长度、曲率和方向的方程。结果表明，在大鼠中，晶须长度呈指数变化的阵列，和一个硬限制固有曲率约束的晶须高度与长度之比。胡须的方向是“扇出”大约相等的背腹和喙尾方向。量化其他感觉结构相对于触须基点的位置显示出与体感皮质侏儒的显著对齐，这种对齐不会发生在其他坐标系的选择中（例如，以眼睛的中点为中心）。我们预计，面部感觉结构的量化，包括触须，最终将使跨物种的多模态感测量的比较。
The morphology of an animal's face will have large effects on the sensory information it can acquire. Here we quantify the arrangement of cranial sensory structures of the rat, with special emphasis on the mystacial vibrissae (whiskers). Nearly all mammals have vibrissae, which are generally arranged in rows and columns across the face. The vibrissae serve a wide variety of important behavioral functions, including navigation, climbing, wake following, anemotaxis, and social interactions. To date, however, there are few studies that compare the morphology of vibrissal arrays across species, or that describe the arrangement of the vibrissae relative to other facial sensory structures. The few studies that do exist have exploited the whiskers' grid-like arrangement to quantify array morphology in terms of row and column identity. However, relying on whisker identity poses a challenge for comparative research because different species have different numbers and arrangements of whiskers. The present work introduces an approach to quantify vibrissal array morphology regardless of the number of rows and columns, and to quantify the array's location relative to other sensory structures. We use the three-dimensional locations of the whisker basepoints as fundamental parameters to generate equations describing the length, curvature, and orientation of each whisker. Results show that in the rat, whisker length varies exponentially across the array, and that a hard limit on intrinsic curvature constrains the whisker height-to-length ratio. Whiskers are oriented to "fan out" approximately equally in dorsal-ventral and rostral-caudal directions. Quantifying positions of the other sensory structures relative to the whisker basepoints shows remarkable alignment to the somatosensory cortical homunculus, an alignment that would not occur for other choices of coordinate systems (e.g., centered on the midpoint of the eyes). We anticipate that the quantification of facial sensory structures, including the vibrissae, will ultimately enable cross-species comparisons of multi-modal sensing volumes.