Brainstem neurons map whisker touch into object distance, reveals mouse study

Article excerpt

If you are crossing an unfamiliar room in the dark, you may grope around a bit to get a sense of your space. But for many animals, feeling out a space comes more naturally. A mouse, for instance, can efficiently navigate in the dark just by grazing its whiskers against walls and other obstacles. Now Fan Wang, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, has discovered how neurons in a mouse's brainstem use signals from the animal's touch-sensitive whiskers to estimate an object's distance from the face.