Electrophysiological Techniques for Studying Tactile Perception in Rats

Abstract

Neurons communicate by electrical and chemical signals. Neurophysiological studies measuring and manipulating these signals are therefore of utmost importance to understand neural function. In this chapter, we review an extensive set of tools used in our laboratory to study tactile processing in rats. After a very brief summary of the anatomy and physiology of the sense of touch, instrumentation for generating mechanical stimuli is covered in detail. Next, techniques for studying mechanoreceptive afferents are presented. Remaining sections include electroencephalography (EEG), electrocorticography (EcoG), local field potentials (LFP), and extracellular spike recordings for the brain. Acute and chronic preparations for recording from the somatosensory cortex are reviewed in line with the current state-of-the-art technology for electrodes and equipment. Dedicated sections are devoted to electrical microstimulation of neural tissue and microinjection of drugs, which allow manipulation of the somatosensory system for basic and applied research. The material presented in this chapter is also useful for guiding neural engineering applications such as neuroprostheses and brain-machine interfaces (BMI), at their initial developmental stages. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.