Psychometric Curve and Behavioral Strategies for Whisker-Based Texture Discrimination in Rats
Figure 5
Psychometric curve for sandpaper texture discrimination.
A, Performance of Rat C02 discriminating rough P150 sandpaper (base stimulus) from varying smoother (test) sandpapers. Each dot is performance on one daily block (∼25 trials). Open circles, mean accuracy across daily sessions ± SEM. Bars, cumulative accuracy (total correct trials/total trials). B, Mean performance of 3 rats for P150 base discrimination, and for one rat using P120 base. Bars are SEM across daily blocks (n = 4–15 blocks per data point). The x-axis is the difference in mean grit size between the test and base sandpapers. Test sandpaper identity is marked above each point. C, Effect of whisker trimming on difficult (P150 vs. P280) and easy (P150 vs. P1500 or P800) discriminations, for rat H02. D, High-acuity discrimination of a smooth P1500 sandpaper (base) from varying rougher (test) sandpapers. P1500 was the rewarded S+ stimulus.