PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Dario Campagner AU - Mathew Evans AU - Michael R. Bale AU - Andrew Erskine AU - Rasmus S. Petersen TI - Prediction of Primary Somatosensory Neuron Activity During Active Tactile Exploration AID - 10.1101/024364 DP - 2015 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 024364 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/08/10/024364.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/08/10/024364.full AB - Primary sensory neurons form the interface between world and brain. Their function is well-understood during passive stimulation but, under natural behaving conditions, sense organs are under active, motor control. In an attempt to predict primary neuron firing under natural conditions of sensorimotor integration, we recorded from primary mechanosensory neurons of awake, head-fixed mice as they explored a pole with their whiskers, and simultaneously measured both whisker motion and forces with high-speed videography. Using Generalised Linear Models, we found that primary neuron responses were poorly predicted by kinematics but well-predicted by rotational forces acting on the whisker: both during touch and free-air whisker motion. These results are discrepant with previous studies of passive stimulation, but could be reconciled by differences in the kinematics-force relationship between active and passive conditions. Thus, simple statistical models can predict rich neural activity elicited by natural, exploratory behaviour involving active movement of the sense organs.