When   Thursday, November 19, 2009   Time   4:00 PM - 5:00 PM  
Where   Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center Hughes Auditorium 303 E. Superior   map it
Audience   - Faculty/Staff - Student - Public
Contact    
Group   McCormick - Biomedical Engineering Department
More Info   http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/grandchallenges/

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechnical Engineering

Tactile Sensing with Whiskers

4:00 p.m. Thursday, November 19
Hughes Auditorium, Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center
303 E. Superior
Chicago Campus Abstract:

Work in our laboratory aims to understand how tactile information is encoded and processed in the early stages of the nervous system. We use the rat whisker system as a model because the neural processing pathways are analogous to human tactile pathways through the spinal cord and because whiskers are relatively easy to observe and manipulate.

Rats are nocturnal, burrowing animals with poor vision. To tactually explore the world, rats brush their whiskers rhythmically against objects between 5 and 25 times per second. Using only its whiskers, a rat can determine an object's size, shape, orientation, and texture. About 30 whiskers are arranged in a regular array on each side of the rat’s face. The base of each whisker is embedded within a densely innervated follicle where mechanoreceptors transduce deformations to electrical signals and provide input to the brain.

This talk will consist of two parts. In the first, I will describe recent advances our laboratory has made in understanding how rats explore objects with their whiskers, and steps we are taking to understand how the nervous system processes this tactile information. In the second, I will describe some possible applications of tactile sensing with whiskers.

Instead of presenting "conclusions" of the talk, I will raise a series of questions to inspire brainstorming and discussion with the audience, with the aim of finding new - possibly clinically relevant - applications. It will be particularly interesting to work with the audience to determine whether there may be clinical applications based on ideas our laboratory has about how the nervous system processes information.

Biosketch:

Prof. Mitra J. Hartmann received a Bachelor of Science in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University, and a PhD in Integrative Neuroscience from the California Institute of Technology. From 2000 - 2003 she was a postdoctoral scholar in the Bio-Inspired Technology and Systems group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Prof. Hartmann joined the faculty at Northwestern University in 2003 and is presently an Associate Professor with a 50-50 joint appointment between the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. She is also a member of Northwestern's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (NUIN).