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A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates

Grasping movements are some of the most common movements primates do every day. They are important for social interactions as well as picking up objects or food. Usually, these grasping movements are guided by vision but proprioceptive and haptic inputs contribute greatly. Since grasping behaviors a...

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Autores principales: Buchwald, Daniela, Schaffelhofer, Stefan, Dörge, Matthias, Dann, Benjamin, Scherberger, Hansjörg
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8185519/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34113241
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.648483
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author Buchwald, Daniela
Schaffelhofer, Stefan
Dörge, Matthias
Dann, Benjamin
Scherberger, Hansjörg
author_facet Buchwald, Daniela
Schaffelhofer, Stefan
Dörge, Matthias
Dann, Benjamin
Scherberger, Hansjörg
author_sort Buchwald, Daniela
collection PubMed
description Grasping movements are some of the most common movements primates do every day. They are important for social interactions as well as picking up objects or food. Usually, these grasping movements are guided by vision but proprioceptive and haptic inputs contribute greatly. Since grasping behaviors are common and easy to motivate, they represent an ideal task for understanding the role of different brain areas during planning and execution of complex voluntary movements in primates. For experimental purposes, a stable and repeatable presentation of the same object as well as the variation of objects is important in order to understand the neural control of movement generation. This is even more the case when investigating the role of different senses for movement planning, where objects need to be presented in specific sensory modalities. We developed a turntable setup for non-human primates (macaque monkeys) to investigate visually and tactually guided grasping movements with an option to easily exchange objects. The setup consists of a turntable that can fit six different objects and can be exchanged easily during the experiment to increase the number of presented objects. The object turntable is connected to a stepper motor through a belt system to automate rotation and hence object presentation. By increasing the distance between the turntable and the stepper motor, metallic components of the stepper motor are kept at a distance to the actual recording setup, which allows using a magnetic-based data glove to track hand kinematics. During task execution, the animal sits in the dark and is instructed to grasp the object in front of it. Options to turn on a light above the object allow for visual presentation of the objects, while the object can also remain in the dark for exclusive tactile exploration. A red LED is projected onto the object by a one-way mirror that serves as a grasp cue instruction for the animal to start grasping the object. By comparing kinematic data from the magnetic-based data glove with simultaneously recorded neural signals, this setup enables the systematic investigation of neural population activity involved in the neural control of hand grasping movements.
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spelling pubmed-81855192021-06-09 A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates Buchwald, Daniela Schaffelhofer, Stefan Dörge, Matthias Dann, Benjamin Scherberger, Hansjörg Front Behav Neurosci Behavioral Neuroscience Grasping movements are some of the most common movements primates do every day. They are important for social interactions as well as picking up objects or food. Usually, these grasping movements are guided by vision but proprioceptive and haptic inputs contribute greatly. Since grasping behaviors are common and easy to motivate, they represent an ideal task for understanding the role of different brain areas during planning and execution of complex voluntary movements in primates. For experimental purposes, a stable and repeatable presentation of the same object as well as the variation of objects is important in order to understand the neural control of movement generation. This is even more the case when investigating the role of different senses for movement planning, where objects need to be presented in specific sensory modalities. We developed a turntable setup for non-human primates (macaque monkeys) to investigate visually and tactually guided grasping movements with an option to easily exchange objects. The setup consists of a turntable that can fit six different objects and can be exchanged easily during the experiment to increase the number of presented objects. The object turntable is connected to a stepper motor through a belt system to automate rotation and hence object presentation. By increasing the distance between the turntable and the stepper motor, metallic components of the stepper motor are kept at a distance to the actual recording setup, which allows using a magnetic-based data glove to track hand kinematics. During task execution, the animal sits in the dark and is instructed to grasp the object in front of it. Options to turn on a light above the object allow for visual presentation of the objects, while the object can also remain in the dark for exclusive tactile exploration. A red LED is projected onto the object by a one-way mirror that serves as a grasp cue instruction for the animal to start grasping the object. By comparing kinematic data from the magnetic-based data glove with simultaneously recorded neural signals, this setup enables the systematic investigation of neural population activity involved in the neural control of hand grasping movements. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8185519/ /pubmed/34113241 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.648483 Text en Copyright © 2021 Buchwald, Schaffelhofer, Dörge, Dann and Scherberger. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Behavioral Neuroscience
Buchwald, Daniela
Schaffelhofer, Stefan
Dörge, Matthias
Dann, Benjamin
Scherberger, Hansjörg
A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates
title A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates
title_full A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates
title_fullStr A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates
title_full_unstemmed A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates
title_short A Turntable Setup for Testing Visual and Tactile Grasping Movements in Non-human Primates
title_sort turntable setup for testing visual and tactile grasping movements in non-human primates
topic Behavioral Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8185519/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34113241
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.648483
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