Sensory cortical areas are organized into topographic maps representing the sensory
epithelium. Interareal projections typically connect topographically matched subregions …

The rat whisker system connects the tactile environment with the somatosensory
thalamocortical system using only two synaptic stages. Encoding properties of the first stage …

Highlights•To judge whisker vibration intensity, rats integrate evidence over 100 s of
milliseconds.•To identify textures, rats integrate touch-by-touch whisker kinematic …

The somatosensory system, much like the gustatory system, processes information about
events that are in direct contact with the animal. This feature critically distinguishes the …

Neuronal activities underlying a percept are constrained by the physics of sensory signals.
In the tactile sense such constraints are frictional stick–slip events, occurring, amongst other …

Sensory information is actively gathered by animals, but the synaptic mechanisms driving
neuronal circuit function during active sensory processing are poorly understood. Here, we …

Rodents explore the world by palpating objects with their whiskers. Whiskers interact with
objects, causing stresses in whisker follicles and spikes in sensory neurons, which are …

Neurons in all sensory systems have a remarkable ability to adapt their sensitivity to the
statistical structure of the sensory signals to which they are tuned. In the barrel cortex, firing …

In large part, rodents “see” the world through their whiskers, a powerful tactile sense
enabled by a series of brain areas that form the whisker-trigeminal system. Raw sensory …

Sensory gating, where responses to stimuli during sensor motion are reduced in amplitude,
is a hallmark of active sensing systems. In the rodent whisker system, sensory gating has …