Active Spatial Perception in the Vibrissa Scanning Sensorimotor System
Figure 1
Two Localization Algorithms: Topographic Labeled-Line and Haptic-Sensing
Each cartoon depicts an animal contacting a small object (black circle) and an idealization of the resulting neural streams (dashed arrows) afferent to the vibrissa somatosensory cortex.
(A)A labeled-line strategy. During small motion, the location of an object is encoded in the identity of the vibrissa that contacts it. For clarity, only one row of vibrissae is shown; additional rows do not directly aid localization.
(B)A sensorimotor strategy. During large motion, contact on a given vibrissa leaves object position ambiguous. Information about the position of that vibrissa at the time of contact resolves the confound. This scheme does not require multiple vibrissa.