Rodents in their natural environment use their whiskers to distinguish between surfaces having subtly different textures and shapes. They do so by actively sweeping their whiskers across surfaces in a rhythmic motion. To determine how textures are transformed into vibration signals in whiskers and how these vibrations are expressed in neuronal discharges, we induced active whisking in anaesthetized rats, monitored the movement of whiskers across surfaces, and concurrently recorded from trigeminal ganglion (TG) neurons. We show that tactile information is transmitted through high frequency micro-motions superimposed on whisking macro-motions. Consistent with this, we find that in most TG neurons, spike activity and high frequency micro-motions are closely correlated. To determine whether these vibration signals can support texture discrimination we examined their dependence on surface roughness and find that both vibration signals carry information about surface coarseness. Despite a large variability in this translation process, different textures are translated into distinct vibrations profiles. These profiles are dependent on whiskers properties, on the radial distance of the surfaces and on whisking frequency. Using the characteristics of these signals, we employ linear discriminant analysis and find that all whiskers were able to discriminate between the different textures. This classification did not depend on whisking frequency, while deteriorating with radial distance. Finally, increasing the number of whisks and integration of tactile information from multiple whiskers improved texture discrimination. These results indicate that surface roughness is translated into distinct whisker vibration signals that result in neuronal discharges. However, due to the dynamic nature of this translation process, we propose that texture discrimination may require the integration of signals from multiple spatial and temporal sensory channels to disambiguate surface roughness.