生物谷報(bào)道 作為一種夜行動(dòng)物，老鼠依靠它們反應(yīng)特別靈敏的胡須在黑暗而危險(xiǎn)的環(huán)境中摸索,。研究人員早就知道，通過一根柔韌的胡須,，老鼠能夠確定其他物體存在的具體方位,。如今一項(xiàng)新的研究證實(shí),，劃過物體表面的一根胡須，能夠幫助老鼠識別即便是人類的手指也會(huì)發(fā)生混淆的物體的結(jié)構(gòu),。
在老鼠的大腦內(nèi),，有一大部分區(qū)域?qū)ｉT處理胡須所受的刺激。這幅軀體感覺的“地圖”如此之大,，以致于科學(xué)家能夠找出負(fù)責(zé)對單獨(dú)的胡須信號進(jìn)行處理的大腦區(qū)域,。去年，美國劍橋麻省理工學(xué)院的神經(jīng)學(xué)家Christopher Moore和同事研究證實(shí),，老鼠的胡須能夠像撥動(dòng)的豎琴琴弦一樣產(chǎn)生共振——即按照一種特定的頻率進(jìn)行強(qiáng)烈的振動(dòng),。當(dāng)老鼠的胡須劃過物體的表面時(shí)，即便是砂紙,，也足以使胡須產(chǎn)生振動(dòng),。研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，與長在嘴附近的短而纖細(xì)的胡須相比,，那些長在老鼠面部后方的長而粗的胡須,，會(huì)以一個(gè)較低的頻率發(fā)生共振。
研究小組隨后開始研究,，與其他振動(dòng)相比,，老鼠的大腦是否更容易感知這些在老鼠胡須的共振頻率下產(chǎn)生的振動(dòng)。通過將老鼠的胡須以越來越快的速度進(jìn)行振動(dòng),，研究人員記錄下了大腦接收到的神經(jīng)脈沖信號,。他們在5月13日出版的《神經(jīng)》雜志上報(bào)告說，神經(jīng)細(xì)胞在每根胡須的共振頻率下都會(huì)產(chǎn)生特殊的電沖,。這一結(jié)果表明,，老鼠知道它們的胡須在哪里，以及這些胡須是以多快速度振動(dòng)的,。Moore認(rèn)為,，“它所代表的空間以及時(shí)間信號都會(huì)反映在相同的體覺‘地圖’上”。
美國密蘇里州圣路易斯華盛頓大學(xué)的神經(jīng)學(xué)家Thomas Woolsey表示,，這一機(jī)制很可能與內(nèi)耳的毛細(xì)胞感知聲音的機(jī)理類似,。他說，就像大腦通過將不同的頻率整合在一起從而聽到聲音一樣,，有關(guān)頻率的信息能夠幫助嚙齒動(dòng)物的大腦掌握一個(gè)物體的結(jié)構(gòu),。巴爾的摩馬里蘭大學(xué)的神經(jīng)學(xué)家Asaf Keller認(rèn)為，這一發(fā)現(xiàn)表明,，很多身體系統(tǒng)的運(yùn)作可能都與共振有關(guān),。他說，“我相信共振與任何一種感覺器官都有聯(lián)系”，甚至包括人類皮膚上的毛發(fā),。
FURTHER READING：
Clues to the human brain lie in whiskers of rats
Baltimore Sun, July 5, 2004, page 8a.
By Dennis O'Brien
Sun Staff
July 5, 2004
Consider a rat's whiskers.
They're constantly being brushed, wiggled and snipped.
Like hair and fingernails, whiskers are made of dead cells. But they're connected to follicles that make them as sensitive as fingertips - and an important tool for scientists.
Researchers in labs across the country probe the rat's whisker-to-brain connections, hoping to learn more about our neural pathways. Their goal is to advance treatments for brain related disorders and unravel the mystery of how humans interpret the sensation of touch.
"There are all kinds of possibilities," said Thomas Woolsey, a Missouri neurologist whose research 35 years ago, as a Johns Hopkins medical student, sparked much of today's interest.
Researchers had been breeding rats and mice since the early 1800s and training them to crawl through mazes and tap on levers. But in 1970, Woolsey and one of his Hopkins teachers, Hendrick Van der Loos, published a study showing that each whisker on a rodent's face connects to a specific neuron. They found that brushing any whisker fires off a specific set of neurons - arranged in the rat's brain in neat, barrel-shaped packages.
The finding sparked "an explosion of research," said Daniel J. Simons, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Scientists say their work could lead to new technologies for controlling prosthetic limbs and advancing therapies for Alzheimer's, stroke, Parkinson's disease and other disorders.
"Things have really taken off in the past five or 10 years," said Christopher I. Moore, a neurobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He and colleagues publish 30 to 50 scientific papers annually on the rat whisker studies. They also meet at least once a year, at a "barrels" conference, to discuss the latest research.
"It's like trying to decipher a different language," said Asaf Keller, a neurobiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the co-author of a recent rat whisker study.
Woolsey's initial studies used mice. But researchers agree that their findings apply just as well to rats. And in a field that often requires connecting whiskers to electrodes, rats are the preferred tool for most neurological studies. "Rats are easier to train and handle," Moore said.
Sensitive follicles
The usefulness of the rat whisker is based in the animal's physiology. Rats have poor eyesight, but living underground and foraging at night, they use whiskers as probes, extending them forward up to two inches to assess their surroundings.
Rats have about 30 large whiskers and dozens of smaller ones. Although a rat whisker is made up of dead cells, it's embedded in a hair follicle known as a "blood sinus" that passes signals from the whisker to a neuron pathway. While the rat's brain is simpler than a human's, it's a good stand-in for research.
"Ours is a more complex system, but the basic plan is the same. The similarities are more compelling than the differences," Simons said.
In 1973, Woolsey and Van der Loos showed that snipping off a single whisker in the first few days of a rat's life affected the rodent's ability to learn and function. That meant rats had brains like humans that can adapt to change.
"You can take the whiskers off, and it's like taking a finger off early on in life and being left with four fingers instead of five. The brain makes adjustments early on," said Woolsey, now a neurology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
The research continues.
Neural 'sounds'
This spring, Moore's team at MIT published findings suggesting that rats may hear with their whiskers. The study, published in the May issue of Neuron, showed that rat whiskers act like strings on a harp, sending neural signals to the brain the way that a harp string produces notes when plucked.
Specific whiskers are tuned to specific ranges of neural"sounds," the researchers found. Short whiskers are sensitive to high frequencies and long whiskers are sensitive to low frequencies. "Whether they hear with their whiskers is a good question. I'd say it's an open question at this point," Moore said.
In separate studies published last month in the journal Science, neurobiologists at Duke and the University of Maryland detailed experiments demonstrating the intricacies of the rat's signaling system.
At Duke, scientists trained rats to discriminate between a large opening and a small one, rewarding the animal with sugar water if it poked in the right direction when it found a large or small opening. They showed that when rats were busy making that choice they interpreted a signal - a brushing motion along the whisker - differently than rats not engaged in the task.
The rats busy discerning the size of an opening fired off detailed signals in their neurons, like the dim outline of an object appearing on a black-and-white TV screen. The untrained rats fired off brighter, but less detailed signals, like the flash of a camera, said David J. Krupa, the study's author.
In the Maryland study, researchers hooked electrodes to the whiskers of 10 rats and exposed them to gentle waves of electrical current to simulate the whiskers rubbing against sandpaper.
Analyzing readings from electrodes implanted in the rat's brains, they found that neurons fired off signals in predictable patterns, determined by the frequency of the electrical signals.
Lauren Jones, the study's lead author, said the results showed the amazing complexity of the process that occurs every time a rat whisker touches a surface. The findings apply to humans, too.
"It means you don't need a thousand neurons to interpret a signal from your environment. You can do it with one signal," Jones said. "It shows how beautiful and how powerful the brain is."
