A Fluorescent Dye Method Suitable for Visualization of One or More Rat Whiskers

Jacopo Rigosa; Alessandro Lucantonio; Giovanni Noselli; Arash Fassihi; Erik Zorzin; Fabrizio Manzino; Francesca Pulecchi; Mathew E Diamond

doi:10.21769/BioProtoc.2749

A Fluorescent Dye Method Suitable for Visualization of One or More Rat Whiskers

Bio Protoc. 2018 Mar 5;8(5):e2749. doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.2749.

Authors

Jacopo Rigosa¹, Alessandro Lucantonio¹, Giovanni Noselli¹, Arash Fassihi¹, Erik Zorzin¹, Fabrizio Manzino¹, Francesca Pulecchi¹, Mathew E Diamond¹

Affiliation

¹ International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy.

Abstract

Visualization and tracking of the facial whiskers is critical to many studies of rodent behavior. High-speed videography is the most robust methodology for characterizing whisker kinematics, but whisker visualization is challenging due to the low contrast of the whisker against its background. Recently, we showed that fluorescent dye(s) can be applied to enhance visualization and tracking of whisker(s) ( Rigosa et al., 2017 ), and this protocol provides additional details on the technique.

Keywords: Barrel cortex; Dye; Fluorescence; Tactile perception; Tracking; Whisker.