E-Mail IMAGE: Mechanics is key to whisker tactile sensation. When a whisker is deflected, its deformation profile within the follicle determines the activity of different groups of mechanoreceptors. view more Credit: Yifu Luo and Nadina Zweifel Researchers have developed a new mechanical model that simulates how whiskers bend within a follicle in response to an external force, paving the way toward better understanding of how whiskers contribute to mammals' sense of touch. Yifu Luo and Mitra Hartmann of Northwestern University and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology. With the exception of some primates, most mammals use whiskers to explore their environment through the sense of touch. Whiskers have no sensors along their length, but when an external force bends a whisker, that deformation extends into the follicle at the base of the whisker, where the whisker pushes or pulls on sensor cells, triggering touch signals in the nervous system.