The rat vibrissa as a mechanical sensor: Frequency response analysis of the vibrissal-follicle-nerve system

PIZÁ AG; ALBARRACIN, AL; FARFÁN FD

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 2nd FALAN Congress; 2016

FALAN

Generally, when we study the rat vibrisal system, we work with known stimuli and recorded the response of the nervous system at different levels. However, transduction of mechanical stimuli to an electrical signal (vibrissa-follicle-nerve system), is an understudied area and therefore the knowledge about their behavior is limited. In this work, we propose to study this system from an engineering point of view considering it a sensor, and as such, it can be characterized primarily by its frequency response. In order to do this, the vibrissa was stimulated with a mechanical sine stimulus with different frequency and the response was recorded in the corresponding vibrisal nerve. The results show that the characteristics of evoked local field potential (amplitude, RMS, Energy), change the characteristics of distribution for different stimuli. In this paper, we determine a zone of linear change and a threshold at which the system stops to continue the stimulus. This threshold, changes according to the studied vibrissa.