Summary
The early loss of vision results in a reorganized neocortex, affecting areas of the brain that process both the spared and lost senses, and leads to heightened abilities on discrimination tasks involving the spared senses. Here, we used performance measures and machine learning algorithms that quantify behavioral strategy to determine if and how early vision loss alters adaptive sensorimotor behavior. We tested opossums on a motor task involving somatosensation and found that early blind animals had increased limb placement accuracy compared with sighted controls, while showing similarities in crossing strategy. However, increased reliance on tactile inputs in early blind animals resulted in greater deficits in limb placement and behavioral flexibility when the whiskers were trimmed. These data show that compensatory cross-modal plasticity extends beyond sensory discrimination tasks to motor tasks involving the spared senses and highlights the importance of whiskers in guiding forelimb control.
The early loss of vision results in a reorganized visual cortex that processes tactile and auditory inputs. Recent studies in the short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) found that the connections and response properties of neurons in somatosensory cortex of early blind animals are also altered. While research in humans and other mammals shows that early vision loss leads to heightened abilities on discrimination tasks involving the spared senses, if and how this superior discrimination leads to adaptive sensorimotor behavior has yet to be determined. Moreover, little is known about the extent to which blind animals rely on the spared senses. Here, we tested early blind opossums on a sensorimotor task involving somatosensation and found that they had increased limb placement accuracy. However, increased reliance on tactile inputs in early blind animals resulted in greater deficits in limb placement and behavioral flexibility when the whiskers were trimmed.
Summary
This protocol presents a workflow for detecting differences in kinematics between experimental conditions. It is tailored for short-tailed opossums but can be applied to any species capable of completing the ladder rung task. There are four phases of this protocol: (1) data collection, (2) pose tracking, (3) analysis of single trials, and (4) cross-condition comparisons. This pipeline implements aspects of machine learning and signal processing, allowing for rapid data analysis that provides insight into how animals perform this task.
For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to
Englund et al. (2020)
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