Studies On Turning And Olfactory Behavior Control Of Rat-Robot And Its Mechanisms

Modulation of animal behaviors can be achieved by stimulations in specific areas of the brain,which has been employed for the development of rat-robots.Although the last decade has watched the development of this novel technology,there are still two major drawbacks remained in the process of practical applications.For one thing,the control of turning behavior relies on reward learning,and thus unaccurate.On the other hand,the current rat-robot system lacks utilization of rat's own perceptions,making it difficult to acquire environmental odor information back to the controllers.The current study have aimed at providing feasible solutions to these problems.For the first problem,the current study has proposed the ventral posteromedial nucleus of the thalamus(VPM)as a preferential stimulation site of for rat turning behavior control.The parametric effects of VPM stimulation have been quantitatively measured by both behavioral responses and neural responses,thus the reliability and stability of this deep brain VPM stimulation have been thoroughly estimated.By employing functional brain imaging methods,the neurological mechanisms behind has also been explored.For the second problem,the current study has put forward the utilization of rat's biological olfaction.To decode odor information from rat's olfactory bulb,the "odor map" evoked by odorant stimulation has been imaged and characterized.The electrophysiological signals have been recorded and analyzed both under anesthesia and awake.The main innovations of the current study lies in:1)Proposed the stimulation of VPM thalamus as a new turning control site,and tested the effects of stimulatin parameters on rat rutning behavior,thus achieving a direct,turning angle adjustable turning behavioral modulation method;2)Employed optical imaging of intrinsic signals and positron emission tomography to evaluate the stimulation effects on somatosensory cortex,exploring the internal mechanisms through experimental validation;3)Detected "odor map" of rat olfactory bulb with both optical imaging technology and electrophysiological method,establishing the foundation for the development of olfaction assisted rat-robot through the preliminary experiemtnal validaviton.The works above may provide guiding and reference value for further improvement of rat-robots.