Neuromechanical Models of the Rat Vibrissal System

大鼠振动系统的神经力学模型

• 批准号: 0446391
• 负责人: Mitra Hartmann
• 金额: $ 43.28万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-03-01 至 2008-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0446391&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Neuromechanical; Models; Rat; Vibrissal; System

Neuromechanical Models of the Rat Vibrissal System Mitra J. Hartmann, Michael A. Peshkin, Northwestern University Animals use movements to acquire and refine incoming sensory data to construct meaningful representations of the environment. This process is often called "active sensing." During exploratory behaviors, each movement an animal makes aids in the extraction of task-relevant sensory data. As yet, however, neuroscientists have little understanding of how the body and brain work together to acquire, encode, and process the sensory data generated through movement. To study the neuromechanical principles that underlie active sensing behaviors, the investigators will construct an active sensing system in hardware based on careful modeling of a well-understood sensorimotor system: the rat vibrissal (whisker) array. The rat whisker system is an ideal model for studying active sensing behaviors. When exploring their environment, rats sweep their whiskers back and forth in the air and against objects at frequencies typically between 5 and 12 Hz. Using this whisking behavior, the rat can extract accurate information about an objects spatial properties, including size, shape, orientation, and texture. The core of the project involves (1) characterizing the mechanics of rat whiskers and natural whisking movements, both when moving freely in air and when in contact with objects (2) constructing an array of actuated, biomimetic (robotic) whiskers with sensors at the base (3) developing models to interpret the spatiotemporal patterns of whisker sensory activation (both real and robotic) to extract object features. The results will directly generate hypotheses about how information is represented in the rat nervous system, and shed light on the many hundreds of neural recordings from rat somatosensory cortex (barrelcortex) that are performed each year. This project begins to establish rigorous mathematical models for sensory encoding in the whisker system that may generalize to other sensorimotor pathways. In computer science, the research may inspire studies on unsupervised 3D object recognition using non-optical sensors. The project contributes to the interdisciplinary scientific training of both graduate and undergraduate students, brings a quantitative engineering approach to neuroscience, and directly complements coursework in Neural Engineering being developed at Northwestern University.

大鼠振动系统的神经力学模型西北大学动物使用运动来获取和提炼传入的感觉数据，以构建有意义的环境表征。这一过程通常被称为“主动感知”。在探索行为中，动物的每一个动作都有助于提取与任务相关的感觉数据。然而，到目前为止，神经学家们对身体和大脑如何协同工作来获取、编码和处理通过运动产生的感觉数据知之甚少。为了研究主动感知行为背后的神经力学原理，研究人员将在对众所周知的感觉运动系统--大鼠触须阵列--仔细建模的基础上，在硬件上构建一个主动感知系统。大鼠胡须系统是研究主动感觉行为的理想模型。在探索它们的环境时，老鼠会在空气中来回扫胡须，并以通常在5至12赫兹之间的频率向物体扫视。使用这种搅拌行为，老鼠可以提取关于对象空间属性的准确信息，包括大小、形状、方向和纹理。该项目的核心包括：(1)表征大鼠胡须和与物体接触时的自然胡须运动的机制；(2)构建一个底部带有传感器的受控仿生(机器人)胡须阵列；(3)开发模型来解释胡须感觉激活的时空模式(包括真实的和机器人的)，以提取物体特征。这些结果将直接产生关于信息在大鼠神经系统中如何表示的假说，并阐明每年进行的数百次来自大鼠躯体感觉皮质(Barrelcorp)的神经记录。这个项目开始为胡须系统中的感觉编码建立严格的数学模型，这可能会推广到其他感觉运动通路。在计算机科学中，这项研究可能会启发使用非光学传感器进行无监督3D对象识别的研究。该项目有助于研究生和本科生的跨学科科学培训，将定量工程方法引入神经科学，并直接补充西北大学正在开发的神经工程课程。