Open Source Whisking Video Database

Alireza Azafar and colleagues at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour at Rabound University have published an open source database of high speed videos of whisking behavior in freely moving rodents.

As responsible citizens, it’s possible you are missing lab and working from home. Maybe you have plenty to do, or maybe you’re looking for some new data to analyze to increase your knowledge of active sensing in rodents! Well, in case you don’t have that data at hand and can’t collect it yourself for a few more weeks, we have a treat for you! Azafar et al. have shared a database of 6,642 high quality videos featuring juvenile and adult male rats and adult male mice exploring stationary objects. This dataset includes a wide variety of experimental conditions including genetic, pharmacological, and sensory deprivation interventions to explore how active sensing behavior is modulated by different factors. Information about interventions and experimental conditions are available as a supplementary Excel file.

The videos are available as mp4 files as well as MATLAB matrices that can be converted into a variety of data formats. All videos underwent quality control and feature different amounts of noise and background, which makes a great tool for mastering video analysis. A toolbox is available from this group on Github for a variety of whisker analysis methods including nose and whisker tracking. This database is a great resource for studying sensorimotor computation, top-down mechanisms of sensory navigation, cross-species comparison of active sensing, and effects of pharmacological intervention of whisking behaviors.

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications.  Project portal RRID:SCR_021404; Software RRID:SCR_021407