Functional Segregation Within the Whisker-Barrel Neuraxis

The pandemic has shifted our emphasis from DREADD experiments, which were just beginning in March 2020, to electrophysiological characterization and analysis of behavioral data. The plan for the upcoming year is as follows: (1) We will submit a revision of the manuscript quantifying the mouse vibrissal array to the Journal of Experimental Biology (2) In collaboration with the Zeigler laboratory, we will complete a study of the ingestive behavior of the Prrxl1- / - mutant mouse and submit the work to either PLoS One or to the Journal of Neurophysiology (3) We will begin analysis of the 3D the relationships between head and whisker trajectories of Prrxl1- / - mutant and WT animals exploring a volume of space. (4) We will continue to obtain electrophysiological data from neurons in SpVi using a novel stimulator that can strike the whisker array at multiple different directions and different speeds. This will allow us to characterize receptive field structure for varying stimulation speeds and directions, and compare with the mechanical signals predicted from simulation.