The RAT-ROTADRUM: A reaction time task depending on a continuous stream of tactile sensory information to the rat

A novel vibrotactile system for stimulating the glabrous skin of awake freely behaving rats during operant conditioning

“…The significance of whiskers is reflected on separate cortical areas, 'barrels' (Woolsey and Van der Loos, 1970), allocated for processing inputs from individual whiskers in the rat brain. Consequently, there is an elaborate circuitry in each barrel and complex interactions between barrels enable the animal to perform very well in tasks based on whisker stimulation (Adibi and Arabzadeh, 2011;Tahon et al, 2011;Wiest et al, 2010). Moreover, since individual whiskers can be moved, the animal explores the environment continuously, and this 'active' touch strategy is even better than the passive stimulation of the whiskers (Ahissar, 2008).…”

“…To reduce the difficulty of the tasks, the experiments may be designed similar to those of Tahon et al (2011) in which the rats initiated the rotation of a tactile drum by pressing a lever and released it after detecting the tactile cue. The apparatus described in this article is suitable for many different behavioral tasks such as that one.…”

“…Rodents can be trained for behavioral tasks based on sensory inputs from different modalities, such as olfaction (Rajan et al, 2006), vision (Horner et al, 2013), hearing (Talwar and Gerstein, 1999) and touch (Adibi and Arabzadeh, 2011;Harris et al, 1999;Tahon et al, 2011;Walker et al, 2011;Wiest et al, 2010). They can also be conditioned by electrical microstimulation in the cortex (Xu et al, 2004) and drug self-administration (Ikemoto and Sharpe, 2001).…”

“…Moreover, the sinus hair follicle includes striated muscle fibers which enable voluntary movement. Due to the highly magnified cortical representation in rats, the mechanoreceptive fibers and the associated pathways for the vibrissae have been extensively studied in the literature (Adibi and Arabzadeh, 2011;Diamond et al, 2008;Harris et al, 1999;Prigg et al, 2002;Tahon et al, 2011;Walker et al, 2011;Wiest et al, 2010). Additionally, because the afferent and efferent innervation form a closed loop of the sensorimotor pathways, rat vibrissal system is an ideal model for studying active touch (Ahissar, 2008;Kleinfeld et al, 2006).…”

“…For example, Tahon et al (2011) constructed an operant chamber for a reaction task based on stimulating whiskers only on one side. They used a drum with a vertical axis placed just outside an opening near the lever which started a trial.…”