Sensation of a “Noisy” Whisker Vibration in Rats

Abstract

To provide a biological framework to be later applied in robotics, we have devised a delayed comparison task in which subjects discriminate between pairs of vibration delivered either to their whiskers, in rats, or fingertips, in human, with a delay inserted between the two stimuli. The task is to compare two successive stimuli, with different position standard deviations defined by σ₁ and σ₂. By varying the stimulus duration we have observed that rats’ performance improves for longer stimuli, suggesting that for stimuli with a probabilistic structure, evidence can be accumulated over time. On the other hand a change in stimulus duration biased human subjects. This experiment constrains models for the integration of tactile information in robotics.