The objective of this study was to explore a paradigm that would allow a temporary
deprivation of whisker information lasting for a few hours. An additional requirement was to
be non-invasive in order to be usable in awake chronically implanted rats without inducing
stress. With that aim, electrophysiological recordings from the barrel cortex of anesthetized
rats were obtained. The pressure of an air-puff (5–10ms) delivered to the whiskers was
adjusted to evoke a consistent response of around 100μV (extracellular) or approximately …