Variation in Young's modulus along the length of a rat vibrissa
- PMID: 21993474
- DOI: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2011.08.027
Variation in Young's modulus along the length of a rat vibrissa
Abstract
Rats use specialized tactile hairs on their snout, called vibrissae (whiskers), to explore their surroundings. Vibrissae have no sensors along their length, but instead transmit mechanical information to receptors embedded in the follicle at the vibrissa base. The transmission of mechanical information along the vibrissa, and thus the tactile information ultimately received by the nervous system, depends critically on the mechanical properties of the vibrissa. In particular, transmission depends on the bending stiffness of the vibrissa, defined as the product of the area moment of inertia and Young's modulus. To date, Young's modulus of the rat vibrissa has not been measured in a uniaxial tensile test. We performed tensile tests on 22 vibrissae cut into two halves: a tip-segment and a base-segment. The average Young's modulus across all segments was 3.34±1.48GPa. The average modulus of a tip-segment was 3.96±1.60GPa, and the average modulus of a base-segment was 2.90±1.25GPa. Thus, on average, tip-segments had a higher Young's modulus than base-segments. High-resolution images of vibrissae were taken to seek structural correlates of this trend. The fraction of the cross-sectional area occupied by the vibrissa cuticle was found to increase along the vibrissa length, and may be responsible for the increase in Young's modulus near the tip.
Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Similar articles
-
The frequency response of rat vibrissae to sound.J Acoust Soc Am. 2008 May;123(5):2918-27. doi: 10.1121/1.2902181. J Acoust Soc Am. 2008. PMID: 18529208
-
Mechanical signals at the base of a rat vibrissa: the effect of intrinsic vibrissa curvature and implications for tactile exploration.J Neurophysiol. 2012 May;107(9):2298-312. doi: 10.1152/jn.00372.2011. Epub 2012 Feb 1. J Neurophysiol. 2012. PMID: 22298834 Free PMC article.
-
Microstructures and mechanical properties of metastable Ti-30Zr-(Cr, Mo) alloys with changeable Young's modulus for spinal fixation applications.Acta Biomater. 2011 Aug;7(8):3230-6. doi: 10.1016/j.actbio.2011.04.019. Epub 2011 Apr 27. Acta Biomater. 2011. PMID: 21569873
-
Frequency-dependent processing in the vibrissa sensory system.J Neurophysiol. 2004 Jun;91(6):2390-9. doi: 10.1152/jn.00925.2003. J Neurophysiol. 2004. PMID: 15136599 Review.
-
Tactile sensing in specialized predators - from behavior to the brain.Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2012 Apr;22(2):251-8. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2011.11.014. Epub 2011 Dec 28. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2012. PMID: 22209039 Review.
Cited by
-
Mechanical responses of rat vibrissae to airflow.J Exp Biol. 2016 Apr;219(Pt 7):937-48. doi: 10.1242/jeb.126896. J Exp Biol. 2016. PMID: 27030774 Free PMC article.
-
Pre-neuronal processing of haptic sensory cues via dispersive high-frequency vibrational modes.Sci Rep. 2023 Sep 1;13(1):14370. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-40675-8. Sci Rep. 2023. PMID: 37658126 Free PMC article.
-
An amplitude modulation/demodulation scheme for whisker-based texture perception.J Neurosci. 2014 Aug 13;34(33):10832-43. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0534-14.2014. J Neurosci. 2014. PMID: 25122886 Free PMC article.
-
Whisker encoding of mechanical events during active tactile exploration.Front Behav Neurosci. 2012 Nov 6;6:74. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2012.00074. eCollection 2012. Front Behav Neurosci. 2012. PMID: 23133410 Free PMC article.
-
Biomechanics in Soft Mechanical Sensing: From Natural Case Studies to the Artificial World.Biomimetics (Basel). 2018 Oct 24;3(4):32. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics3040032. Biomimetics (Basel). 2018. PMID: 31105254 Free PMC article. Review.
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
