Main description:

Sensorimotor integration, the dynamic process by which the sensory and motor systems communicate with each other, is crucial to humans' and animals' ability to explore and react to their environment. This book summarizes the main aspects of our current understanding of sensorimotor integration in 10 chapters written by leading scientists in this active and ever-growing field. This volume focuses on the whisker system, which is an exquisite model to experimentally approach sensorimotor integration in the mammalian brain.

In this book, authors examine the whisker system on many different levels, ranging from the building blocks and neuronal circuits to sensorimotor behavior. Neuronal coding strategies, comparative analysis as well as robotics illustrate the multiple facets of this research and its broad impact on fundamental questions about the neurobiology of the mammalian brain.

Contents:

1. Introduction

Alexander Groh and Patrik Krieger

Part I: Whisker System in Mammals

2. Comparative Studies of Somatosensory Systems and Active Sensing

Kenneth C. Catania and Elizabeth H. Catania

Part II: Building Blocks of the Whisker System

3. The Whisker Thalamus

Manuel Castro-Alamancos

4. Synaptic Microcircuits in the Barrel Cortex

Dirk Feldmeyer, Gabriele Radnikow, and Quanxiao Qi

5. Imaging the Cortical Representation of Active Sensing in the Vibrissa System

Fritjof Helmchen and Jerry L. Chen

6. The Rodent Vibrissal System as a Model to Study Motor Cortex Function

Cornelius Schwarz and Shubhodeep Chakrabarti

7. The Central Pattern Generator for Rhythmic Whisking

David Kleinfeld, Martin Deschenes, and Jeffrey D. Moore

Part III: Computations of the Whisker System

8. Functional principles of Whisker-mediated Touch Perception

Miguel Maravall and Mathew E. Diamond

9. Location Coding by the Whisking System

Tess Baker Oram, Eldad Assa, Per Magne Knutsen, and Ehud Ahissar

10. The Robot Vibrissal System: Understanding Mammalian Sensorimotor Co-ordination through Biomimetics

Tony J. Prescott, Ben Mitchinson, Nathan Lepora, Stuard P. Wilson, Sean R. Anderson, John Porill, Paul Dean, Charles Fox, Martin J. Pearson, J. Charles Sullivan, and A. G. Pipe

Part IV: Development of the Whisker System

11. Impact of Monoaminergic Neuromodulators on the Development of Sensorimotor Circuits

Dirk Schubert, Nael

Nadif Kasri, Tansu Celikel, and Judith Homberg