Neuroanatomy
A large part of the brain of whisker-specialist mammals is involved in the processing of nerve impulses from vibrissae, a fact that presumably corresponds to the important position the sense occupies for the animal. Information from the vibrissae arrives in the brain via the trigeminal nerve and is delivered first into the trigeminal sensory complex of brainstem. From there, the most studied pathways are those leading up through parts of thalamus and into barrel cortex, though other major pathways through Superior colliculus in midbrain (a major visual structure in visual animals) and Cerebellum, to name but a couple, are increasingly coming under scrutiny. Aside from its use as a model sensory system, neuroscientists studying many aspects of brain function favour the system for a number of reasons (see Barrel cortex).
Read more about this topic: Whiskers