This is a recording of footprints of Cat M1 as he walked along the normal test corridor 25 cm wide and along the same corridor when its width was reduced by a longitudinal divider to 15 cm.
Behavior: Walking- One Pellet (Read More)
Cats walked in a chamber that had a 250 cm long and 25 cm wide test corridor. An external wall of the corridor was made of a transparent plastic, which permitted visual monitoring and recording of the walking cat.
During each recording session, a cat walked in both unobstructed corridor and in the same corridor obstructed with small objects. A single white wooden obstacle of 1 cm in height and 2.5 cm in diameter was the simplest obstruction. It was placed on sites whether the cat would normally step when walking in the unobstructed corridor. We determined that by letting the cat to walk 12-24 times along the unobstructed corridor at the beginning of the recording session while we took notice of where its right fore-paw stepped. Then we placed the object on one of these sites, and the cat continued to walk along now obstructed walkway. During other recording sessions, we placed many such objects on the floor, regardless of where the cats stepped normally, and let it make its way through them. A computerized, active-marker three-dimensional real-time motion capture and analysis system Visualeyez (VZ-4000, Phoenix Technologies) was used to record the cat's movements while it passed through the test corridor. See Visualeyez page for more information.
Results of these experiments were published in Chu MI, Seto SH, Beloozerova IN, and Marlinski V. Strategies for obstacle avoidance during walking in the cat. J. Neurophysiol., 118(2): 817-831, 2017. PDF
During selected runs, the walkways were obstructed with a single while obstacle a “pellet”. In both corridors, the obstacle was initially placed on the 4th placement of the cat’s right forelimb, and several trials were recorded. Then, during recordings in the corridor of normal width, the obstacle was displaced to the right or to the left (z coordinate). During recordings in the narrowed corridor, the obstacle was displaced towards the entrance of the corridor in increments of 2.5 cm.The experiment observation notes are attached below.
Recorded data channels from Visualeyez (VZ) are:
- FR (Forelimb Right) – Channel 307
- FL (Forelimb Left) – Channel 308
- HR (Hindlimb Right) – Channel 306
- HL (hindlimb Left) – Channel 305
- Floor LED1- Channel 504
- Floor LED2- Channel 508
- Floor LED 3- Channel 502
- Floor LED4- Channel 506
- Pellet locations- Channel 308