All animals purposefully navigate feature-rich environments: while exploring, in search of vital resources of food and water, finding mates, and patrolling and marking habitats. During these complex behaviors, continuous analogue input information from peripheral sensory organs guides discrete and digital sequential motor output; accordingly, each action is informed, modulated, or...
Many species of rodents rely on the set of exquisitely sensitive facial vibrissae (whiskers) to guide rich behaviors in which other senses are inadequate. Although whiskers are, like all hairs, inert strands of keratin, they provide the animal with a rich landscape of tactile information which is used to guide...
Mechanisms for sensing fluid flow are well studied in arthropods and in some aquatic mammals, but we know very little about how terrestrial mammals detect and localize airflow (Chapter 1). In this thesis, I will describe a series of studies in rodents that investigate the behavioral, mechanical, and neural basis...