Texture is a central component of touch. To learn how contact with a surface gives rise to a sensation of texture, many laboratories have examined the vibrissae system of rodents—a highly efficient sensory system with well-studied structural organization [by Kleinfeld et al. (Current Opinion in Neurobiology 16(4): 435–444, 2006)]. Vibrissal texture decoding summarizes current knowledge about how whisking on surfaces leads to texture sensation. The vibrissae system of rats presents a unique opportunity for investigating how sensory receptors generate signals through their interaction with the environment, and how the brain reads and interprets the afferent signals.
