Integration of visual and electrosensory information in a discrimination task
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1
Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Biologie II, Germany
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2
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Institut für Neurobiologie, Germany
Weakly electric fish (Apteronotus albifrons) possess an electric sense that is employed to guide their behavior under low visibility conditions. The animals produce and electric organ discharge (EOD) which leads to an electric field surrounding the fish. With cutaneous electroreceptors distributed all over their body which are tuned to the own electric field they can sense distortions of the self-generated field and use this information. Any object having a conductivity different from the surrounding medium (water) will distort the field. Strongly conductive objects locally increase the field intensity and less conductive objects locally reduce the electric field amplitude.
While animals of this species are a widely used model system for studies on sensory processing. These, however, have been concentrated on the processing of electrosensory information, their visual sense has been largely neglected.
Here we set out to establish a behavioral paradigm to assess learning and the integration of visual and electrosensory information. In a two-alternative-forced-choice discrimination task animals were trained to certain combinations of electrosensory and visual cues. In test experiments these cues were set into conflict. Our results show that fish of this species are well able to learn such a discrimination task yielding discrimination performances of 100% correct choices. They further can discriminate objects using visual or electrosensory information alone. In conflict situations the animals show decreased discrimination performance indicating that both senses contribute in approximately equal shares.
We thus have established a behavioral paradigm that will in the future allow us to relate physiological findings back to behavior and vice versa.
Keywords:
behaviour,
Learning,
object discrimination,
Perception,
sensory integration,
weakly electric fish
Conference:
Bernstein Conference 2012, Munich, Germany, 12 Sep - 14 Sep, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Sensory processing and perception
Citation:
Ender
A,
Benda
J and
Grewe
J
(2012). Integration of visual and electrosensory information in a discrimination task.
Front. Comput. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Bernstein Conference 2012.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fncom.2012.55.00055
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Received:
25 May 2012;
Published Online:
12 Sep 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Anatoli Ender, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Biologie II, Planegg-Martinsried, Germany, anatolie@gmx.at