Functional specificity of rat vibrissal primary afferents

LUCIANNA, FACUNDO; FARFÁN, FERNANDO DANIEL; ALBARRACÍN, ANA LIA; FELICE, CARMELO JOSÉ

Mar del Plata

Congreso; XXX Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias; 2015

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

In this study we propose to quantify the peripheral vibrissal system specificity through itsneuronal responses. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analyses were used,which required the implementation of a binary classifier (artificial neural network) trainedto identify the applied stimulus. The training phase consisted of the observation of apredetermined amount of vibrissal sweeps belonging to two experimental situations. Ourresults suggest that specificity of peripheral vibrissal system, quantified through neuronalresponses, varies according to the perceived stimulus, and that it can be quantifiedthrough an ROC curve analysis. Furthermore we found that such specificity can bedetermined by an binary classifier after observing at most 5 vibrissal sweeps.