A tactile virtual reality system reveals the neural codes in the barrel cortex that underlie wall-tracking in mice.

Two distinct thalamocortical pathways were found to provide differential excitatory synaptic input to distinct cell-types across layers of mouse primary somatosensory barrel cortex.

Neurons within rat somatosensory cortex are selective to texture and are spatially organized according to their texture preference.

Primary motor cortex afferents supra-linearly amplify the responses and sharpen angular tuning of neurons in the S1 barrel cortex.

Brief optogenetic stimulation of thalamocortical axons evoked a 400 Hz wavelet, 'ripplet,' in the extracellular field potential in cortical layer 4, together with phase-locked spike bursts in fast-spiking inhibitory interneurons and alternating excitatory and inhibitory synaptic currents in excitatory cells.

RORβ is a key layer 4 transcription factor orchestrating a critical juncture in barrel development where terminal differentiation and activity inputs are integrated to drive cellular organization in the cortex.

The somatosensory cortex doesn't integrate mixed bilateral inputs, as partially uncrossing projections from the whiskers duplicates their representation by segregating lateralized inputs from each side of the head.

Whisker barrels provide clues about neocortical development, as computer modelling shows that barrels can self-organize, based on competition between adjacent thalamocortical axons, suggesting that genetic instruction plays a secondary role.

An expanded map of mouse cortex reveals the expansion of retinotopic organization into barrel and retrosplenial cortices.

Touch information is represented with minimal noise in the somatosensory cortex during tactile exploration.