Coordination of Orofacial Motor Actions into Exploratory Behavior by Rat

Abstract

SUMMARY The delineation of sensorimotor circuits that guide exploration begins with an understanding of the pattern of motor outputs [1]. These motor patterns provide a clue to the form of the underlying circuits [2–4] (but see [5]). We focus on the behaviors that rodents use to explore their peripersonal space through goal-directed positioning of their nose, head, and vibrissae. Rodents sniff in response to novel odors, reward expectation, and as part of social interactions [6–12]. Sniffing serves olfaction [13, 14], while whisking synchronized to sniffing serves vibrissa-based touch [6, 15, 16]. We quantify the ethology of exploratory nose and head movements in relation to breathing. We find that sniffing is accompanied by prominent lateral and vertical de-flections of the nose, i.e., twitches, which are driven by activation of the deflector nasi muscles [17]. On the timescale of individual breaths, nose motion is rhythmic and has a maximum deflection following the onset of inspiration. On a longer timescale, excursions of the nose persist for several breaths and are accompanied by an asymmetry in vibrissa positioning toward the same side of the face. Such directed deflections can be triggered by a lateralized source of odor. Lastly, bobbing of the head as the animal cranes and explores is phase-locked to sniffing and to movement of the nose. These data, along with prior results on the resetting of the whisk cycle at the onset of inspiration [15, 16, 18], reveal that the onset of each breath initiates a “snapshot” of the orofacial sensory environment.

Sniffing behaviour‐related changes in cardiac and cortical activity in rats

“…Over the course of 10 min in the open field, two out of five rats showed rearing behaviour with a duration of up to 3 s during slow periods, in which one mouse reared 5 times and the other mouse reared 3 times, resulting in a total of 8 rearing periods. Consistent with the previous report (Kurnikova et al 2017), HF sniffing was detected in most of these rearing periods (n = 7 times).…”

“…Consistent with the previous report (Kurnikova et al . ), HF sniffing was detected in most of these rearing periods ( n = 7 times).…”

“…The other behavioural pattern associated with sniffing behaviour is rearing (Kurnikova et al 2017) (Fig. 2G).…”

Functional convergence of autonomic and sensorimotor processing in the lateral cerebellum

“…They can emerge from predominantly conscious activity such as locomotion, licking or whisking, but also from more subconscious behaviors like heart beat or respiration. Speed, amplitude and phase of rhythmic movements depend on the behavioral demands and context, and thereby they depend on each other (Welker, 1964; Cao et al, 2012; Moore et al, 2013; Kurnikova et al, 2017). Accordingly, many of the motor domains involved in rhythmic movements serve multiple functions and many of these functions can be coordinated in a concerted action.…”

A functional cortical network for sensorimotor sequence generation

“…Sensorimotor control of orofacial structures governs a wide range of both innate and learned behaviors that are essential for survival, such as communication, breathing and feeding, and is thus tightly orchestrated 4,5 . The motor control of directional licking has been studied extensively in mice and yielded many insights into working memory, motor planning, and the neural basis of simple sensorimotor transformations [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] .…”