summary: New research reveals that mice not only use touch but also the sound to move in their environments through whisk. These voices created for the abyss are addressed by the auditory cortex, even when the touch inputs are blocked, indicating that mice can be interpreted as a separate sensory sign.
In behavioral tests, mice identified the objects that use the sounds produced by their barley only, indicating a multi -sensation integration in their brain perception system. The results can inspire new directions in robots, sensory rehabilitation, and brain research.
Main facts:
- Multi -sensitive integration: The process of mice created independently from touch.
- Behavioral evidence: Aly recognized mice objects using whipping sounds only.
- Technological capabilities: This research may affect the artificial extremities, sensory rehabilitation, and robots.
source: Weizmann Institute for Science
Mice are located in dark burrows, with a limited vision, brushing their barley against their environment to move and detect things around them. This behavior, which is called palpitations, has been widely studied in the past few decades, and was traditionally seen as a purely touch.
Now the Weizmann Institute offers science researchers a completely new view of this process.
These resounding results, Recently published in Current biologyIt reveals that palpitations generate hidden voices encrypted in the auditory shell of mice, which enhances their perception of their surroundings.
“The hairs are so sensitive that no one thought of verifying whether they produce sounds that mice can hear,” says team leader Professor Ilan Lambel. From the Department of Brain Science in Weizmann.
The study provides a unique overview of the complexity of natural perception, which usually includes inputs of multiple senses, in this case touch and hearing.
In fact, humans also combine these two types of signals often more than one believes. Imagine, for example, your fingers give up a crowded bag to find a candy bar, sudden spaciousness and fun in the cover.
“Poets are so sensitive that no one thought of verifying whether they produce sounds that could hear mice”
In the new study, the Lambel team – led by Dr. Bin Efron, a PhD student, worked with doctors. Athanasios Ntelezos and Yonatan Katz began to record the sounds made by bristles that are achieved in different surfaces, including dried polyphilla leaves and aluminum chips.
Researchers used sensitive microphones that could record ultrasound frequencies, which exceed the upper limit of the audible area of humans. They put the microphones about 2 centimeters from the source of the sound, around the same distance as in the mouse’s ear to its barley.
After that, scientists made completely different recordings: they measured the nervous activity in the auditory shell of mice that were brushing their hairs against different things. Records showed that the audio networks of mice responded to the fuel -created sounds, regardless of the accuracy of the accuracy.
When the researchers interrupted the paths that transmit the sensation of touch from bristles to the brain, the auditory crust is still responding to these sounds, indicating that mice can be treated as separate sensory inputs, regardless of the feeling of touch.
However, the fact that the mouse auditory system responds to some noise does not necessarily mean that mice use them for sensing and can identify objects through this noise. To explore this issue, the researchers resorted to artificial intelligence.
They first trained the machine learning model to identify the organized organisms registered from the auditory shell of mice. Artificial intelligence has successfully identified the correct organisms of nervous activity alone, indicating that mice may be able to explain this sermon similarly.
After that, the researchers trained another model for learning the device to identify objects based on the recorded sounds made by bristles that achieve these organisms.
The model – which was trained in the nervous activity alone and the party that was trained in sound recordings – was equally successful, indicating that the neurological responses on the palpation were directly caused by sounds and not through other sensory information, such as those coming from the smell or touch.
These results led the researchers to the central question of their study: Can mice identify the things that use the sounds created by the vessel alone? To address this, Efron and his colleagues have a behavioral experience.
They trained mice, which were canceled at touch, to identify aluminum chips only through their generated voice. The mice responded to the sounds in a consistent way, linking these voices to the sensory information they represent.
“Our results show that the whipping mesh in the brain, called Vibrissa, works in a multimedia integrated manner when animals are active with their surroundings,” summarizes LAMPL.
He explains that this multimedia function may have evolved in the context of development to help mice search for prey or avoid their predators.
“Since the palpitator generates much weaker sounds of walking, the mouse can rely on it when, for example, chooses whether to walk across a fragile and more dry crop field for one tormented and quieter, to avoid detection of the owl.
“The whipping can also help know whether the trunk is hollow or a sufficient juice and deserves a bite.”
By breaking the boundaries between touch and hearing, the study is not only revealing something new about mice, but also opens a large group of research trends for future exploration of the sensory systems of the brain, especially the mechanisms in which the brain merges different types of sensory inputs. New results may also lead to practical technology innovations.
Science numbers
The diameter of mouse bristles is 40 to 80 microns at the base – just as it resembles medium human hair – and 3 to 4 microns in the edge.
The possibilities are endless. If the brain is able to process sensory information simultaneously from different sources, the same principles may be used in the artificial extremities, or sensory rehabilitation after the brain shock, or perhaps even to enhance perception in individuals who suffer from visually impaired.
For example, learning exercises for the blind are already exploited by the distinctive sounds produced by the white cane when the surface comes into contact, and this approach can be developed more.
Another potential field for potential innovation is robots. “Integration of different types of sensory inputs is a great challenge in the design of automated systems,” says Efron.
“The mouse brain whisk system may provide an inspiration for technologies that will address this challenge through, for example, help in creating early sensors to prevent collision, especially when the vision is limited due to smoke or other visual obstacles.”
About this news of this nervous science research
author: Maian Shen
source: Weizmann Institute for Science
communication: Mayan Shain – Wezmann Institute of Science
image: The image is attributed to news of neuroscience
The original search: Open access.
“Disclosure and nervous encryption of the sounds created in miceBy Ilan Lambel and others. Current biology
a summary
Disclosure and nervous encryption of the sounds created in mice
The Vibrissa system of mice and other rodents allows active sensing by the abyss movements and is a traditional, purely tangible system.
Here, we ask whether whisk against things produces audible sounds and whether mice are able to perceive these sounds.
We have found that palpitations that are fastened to the head against things produce the audio sounds well within the scope of hearing.
We recorded a nervous activity in the auditory shell of the mice in which we had a sense of vibration and we found that the rate of release of hearing neurons was strongly adjusted by whisk against things.
Moreover, the object identity of the object can be reliable from the nervous activity of the population and closely matches the decoding patterns derived from the sounds recorded simultaneously, indicating that the nervous activity reflects vocal information.
Finally, trained mice, which were canceled in the touch of the touch in Vibrissae, were able to determine the things only based on the sounds produced during the whisk.
Our results indicate that besides its traditional role as a touch -on -touch system, the Vibrissa rodent system is involved both of the touch and auditory methods in a multimedia way during active exploration.
2025-05-24 14:24:00
