Peri-Head Distance Coding in the Mouse Brainstem

Perceiving object distance in peri-personal space is essential for guiding movement and avoiding danger. During active sensation, distance information is often anchored to the body via touch; yet how early somatosensory circuits extract distance information from tactile inputs remains unclear. Here, we investigate how second-order neurons in the mouse whisker brainstem encode peri-head distance. Using in vivo extracellular recordings in awake mice in a naturalistic wall-passing paradigm, we find brainstem neurons employ two distance-coding schemes: a "proximity" code, where firing increases monotonically as objects approach the face; and a "map" code, where neurons exhibit peak tuning at specific distances to collectively tile peri-head space. The map code outperforms proximity code in population decoding of distance. Perturbation experiments reveal multi-whisker integration and internuclear inhibition contribute to the generation of map-like tuning. These findings highlight a previously underappreciated computational role for brainstem circuits, where inhibition acts as a neural comparator to transform proximity-based sensory inputs into a map-like representation of peri-personal space.