Grant: Operating Grant

Many senses require self-generated movement to extract information from the world: eye movement for vision, limb movement for touch, sniffing for olfaction, etc. The correct interpretation of sensory messages depends, however, on understanding how sensor movements are regulated because motor strategies determine the features of sensory messages processed by the brain. We use the vibrissa system of rodents as a model for addressing the role of movement in sensory processing. Our specific aims are to identify and characterize the brainstem circuitry that controls rhythmic whisker movements in rodents (whisking) in order to understand how motor cortical areas act on this circuitry for controlling voluntary movement parameters (speed, direction intensity, etc). The control of sensor motion (hand and eye for example) is severely affected in several neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, which may lead to perceptive errors and hallucinatory sensations. Beyond sensory coding, whisking constitutes an overt expression of the emotional and motivational state of rodents. A detailed knowledge of this behavior could provide simple metrics for assessing the animal's subjective valuation of objects and experiences. Such metrics would be of particular interest, for instance, to assess motor and motivational deficits in mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders.