"A mechanistic description of the generation of whisker movements is essential for understanding the control of whisking and vibrissal active touch. We explore how facial-motoneuron spikes are translated, via an intrinsic muscle, to whisker movements. This is achieved by constructing, simulating, and analyzing a computational, biomechanical model of the motor plant, and by measuring spiking to movement transformations at small and large angles using high-precision whisker tracking in vivo. ... The model provides a direct translation from motoneuron spikes to whisker movements and can serve as a building block in closed-loop motor–sensory models of active touch."
Model Type: Muscle model and vibrissa biomechanics
Cell Type(s): Vibrissa motoneuron; Vibrissa motor plant
Simulation Environment: MATLAB
Implementer(s): Golomb, David [golomb at bgu.ac.il]; Simony, Erez [erez.simony at weizmann.ac.il]
References:
Simony E et al. (2010). Temporal and spatial characteristics of vibrissa responses to motor commands. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. 30 [PubMed]