期刊
BRAIN BEHAVIOR AND EVOLUTION
卷 62, 期 3, 页码 141-151出版社
KARGER
DOI: 10.1159/000072723
关键词
naked mole-rat; somatosensory; orienting; vibrissae; touch; guard hairs; subterranean; sensorimotor integration; rodent; blind
资金
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE [R01NS034692] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS [R29DC002850] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NIDCD NIH HHS [DC02850] Funding Source: Medline
- NINDS NIH HHS [NS34692] Funding Source: Medline
Orientation guided by mechanosensory stimuli is a fundamental behavior that has been analyzed most effectively in simple systems, but has been difficult to assess in mammals. This study demonstrates that sparsely distributed sensory 'hairs' on the body of naked mole-rats provide an ideal detector array for the assessment of touch guided orienting behavior. Naked mole-rats are fully subterranean rodents that are functionally blind and lack fur. About 40 tactile hairs (resembling facial vibrissae) are found on each side of the body, and they are systematically organized in a grid-like pattern from head to tail. Deflection of a single body hair triggered a highly accurate orientation of the snout toward the point of stimulation, thus topographically organized motor behavior can be elicited from this sensory array. This orienting behavior is specific to the body hair system: touch of intervening skin evoked responses less reliably, and observed responses were not topographically organized. Orientation elicited from this array was accurate regardless of the head-to-body position at the time of hair stimulation indicating that the orienting motor score takes relative head position into account. The consistent pattern of these hairs coupled with robust orienting behavior indicates that this mammalian model provides an appropriately simple system for analyzing the neuronal basis of sensorimotor integration involved in tactile orienting behavior. Copyright (C) 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel.
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