Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Nicholas E. Bush, Sara A. Solla, Mitra J. Z. Hartmann
Summary: Through studying the rodent whisker system, researchers have found that primary sensory neurons can simultaneously represent multiple mechanical features of a stimulus, do not preferentially encode principal components, and represent continuous and tiled variations of all available mechanical information. This diverse representation helps deepen our understanding of the encoding capabilities of Vg neurons.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Anatomy & Morphology
Emily J. J. Lessner, Kathleen N. N. Dollman, James M. M. Clark, Xing Xu, Casey M. M. Holliday
Summary: The study focuses on the trigeminal nerve in vertebrates, and found that crocodiles have enhanced tactile sensation. Through the analysis of fossil remains, it was discovered that early Jurassic crocodylomorphs had increased sensory abilities. The research establishes patterns of reptile trigeminal ecomorphology and reveals evolutionary patterns of somatosensory ecology.
JOURNAL OF ANATOMY
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Yuka Nakaya, Koichi Iwata, Masayuki Kobayashi
Summary: This study aimed to investigate the effect of the insular cortex (IC) on neuronal spike firings in response to noxious and innoxious stimuli to the face. It was found that the descending projections from the IC can increase the response of Sp5C neurons to noxious mechanical stimuli. These results suggest that the IC plays a role in facilitating nociception by enhancing the activity of Sp5C neurons.
Article
Biochemical Research Methods
Schnaude Dorizan, Kevin J. Kleczka, Admir Resulaj, Trevor Alston, Chris S. Bresee, Mitra J. Z. Hartmann
Summary: This article introduces a novel multi-whisker stimulator for assessing neural selectivity for the direction of global motion. The stimulator can generate repeatable, linear sweeps of tactile stimulation across the whisker array in any direction and with a range of speeds.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE METHODS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Zeena-Britt Sanders, Harriet Dempsey-Jones, Daan B. Wesselink, Laura R. Edmondson, Alexander M. Puckett, Hannes P. Saal, Tamar R. Makin
Summary: Scientists compared the representation of digits in the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) during active and passive tasks. The basic features of digit representation were consistent across tasks, but some differences were observed. The active task showed higher activity and more information content between digits, while the passive task had a trend towards greater selectivity for digits. Motor contributions to digit representation should be considered in addition to the traditional passive stimulation paradigm.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Chia-wei Chang, Meiling Zhao, Samantha Grudzien, Max Oginsky, Yexin Yang, Sung Eun Kwon
Summary: The primary somatosensory cortex (S1) plays an important role in movement control by encoding sensory input and receiving inputs from other sensorimotor areas. In this study, silencing the non-whisker S1 area disrupted hind paw movement during locomotion in mice. Furthermore, the S2 and M1 areas were found to provide major inputs to the non-whisker S1 area, with S2 projections preferentially targeting inhibitory interneurons.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Gowtham Sriram Jawaharram, Christopher M. Barr, Khalid Hattar, Shen J. Dillon
Summary: In a series of nanopillar compression tests on tungsten, the effects of surface oxidation on deformation were studied using in situ heating, revealing a mechanism for localized plasticity. The results suggest that the constraint imposed by surface oxidation may lead to the growth of whiskers, similar to the whisker growth mechanism. The study also discussed the similarities between the tungsten fuzz growth mechanism and whisker growth in different conditions.
Article
Robotics
E. L. Starostin, V. G. A. Goss, G. H. M. van der Heijden
Summary: This study addresses the theoretical question of how forces and moments measured at the base of a whisker can predict the location of the point where the whisker makes contact with an object. The study finds that a minimum of three independent forces or moments are required for predicting the contact point, but certain conservation laws of the elastic equilibrium equations prevent unique solutions in cases except the tip of the whisker. The existence of these conservation laws depends on the material and geometrical properties of the whisker. This study also discusses the effects of coordinate systems, tapered whiskers, and multiple point contact.
Article
Agriculture, Multidisciplinary
Philip Pirkwieser, Maik Behrens, Veronika Somoza
Summary: Metallic off-flavors in food products have been a topic of discussion for over 90 years, with diverse causes ranging from micronutrient concentrations to pharmaceutical side effects. The mechanisms behind metallic sensing and its contributions to taste, smell, and trigeminal nerve sensations are still poorly understood.
JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Lau M. Andersen, Sarang S. Dalal
Summary: The cerebellum is involved in precisely predicting the timing of sensory feedback and rhythmic stimuli, possibly in coordination with the putamen and thalamus. It shows higher power in response to perfectly predictable stimuli, suggesting a role in detecting deviations from rhythmic patterns.
Article
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Foad Sohrabi, Tao Jiang, Wei Cui, Wei Yu
Summary: This paper proposes a deep learning approach for active sensing problems in wireless communications. It utilizes a long short-term memory (LSTM) network to capture temporal correlations in observations and map them to fixed-size state information vectors. A deep neural network (DNN) is used to design the next measurement step based on the LSTM state at each time frame, and another DNN maps the final LSTM state to the desired solution. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed deep active sensing strategy over existing adaptive or nonadaptive schemes.
IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Zi Hao Guo, Hai Lu Wang, Jiajia Shao, Yangshi Shao, Luyao Jia, Longwei Li, Xiong Pu, Zhong Lin Wang
Summary: Artificial haptic sensors are crucial for touch-based human-interfaced applications, but they lack the ability to respond to remote events. Inspired by the electroreception somatosensory system of elasmobranch fishes, researchers have developed a soft artificial electroreceptor that can sense approaching targets and encode the information into voltage pulses for human interaction. This electroreceptor has demonstrated applications in prewarning systems, robotic control, game operation, and three-dimensional object recognition, enhancing the functionalities and applications of human-interfaced electronics.
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Oleg Solopchuk, Alexandre Zenon
Summary: This article addresses the difficulty in estimating information gain in active sensing by proposing a linear approximation to information gain and implementing efficient gradient-based action selection within an artificial neural network setting. The model is compared with state of the art and validated on an active sensing task based on the MNIST dataset. Additionally, an approximation exploiting the amortized inference network is proposed and performs equally well in certain contexts.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Thomas F. Burns, Ramesh Rajan
Summary: The classical view of sensory information flow through the barrel cortex is being challenged by new evidence, which highlights both the presence of general processing and organizational principles as well as a growing number of exceptions to these principles. Investigating gaps in the literature may lead to a better understanding of whisker sensation and broader sensory and cortical processing.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Jennifer K. Leestma, Katherine Heidi Fehr, Peter G. Adamczyk
Summary: The study found positive linear sensitivity of DMAMA to stiffness on ramps and level ground. Additionally, there was a positive linear sensitivity of DMAMA to ground slope in the low- and medium-stiffness conditions and a negative interaction effect between slope and stiffness. Considerable variability suggests that applications of DMAMA as a control input should look at the running average over several strides.
