Whisker Movements Reveal Spatial Attention: A Unified Computational Model of Active Sensing Control in the Rat
Figure 5
(Lower trace, axis to right) Solid line marked at each sample with dots is whisking drive signal, . (Upper traces, axis to left) Thin dotted and solid lines indicate maximum retraction and protraction angles (
and
), respectively, for one whisker (the most rostral whisker on the left). Overlaid thick lines show the target protraction angle,
, which is equal to
or
depending on the value of
(see Equation 9). Feint vertical lines show the time of oscillator ticks (times of falling edges in
). Actual whisker protraction angle,
, is indicated by the dashed line and is driven towards
. A sharp increase in maximum protraction angle occurs shortly before 0.5 s; this change is reflected in the whisker protraction angle most strongly during the subsequent protraction which ends at around 0.6 s.