Active Visual Depth Perception by Looming

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Humans and other animals use visual 'looming' of a stimulus to detect change in distance of a stimulus in the depth of the visual field. It is unclear how such visual cues drive neural signals that guide appropriate behavioral responses such as approach or avoidance for such a stimulus. This project uses an insect, the moth Manduca, which hovers in front of flowers while feeding in flight, as a simpler system for experimentation. A combined approach links behavioral experiments to physiology and to modeling, to experimentally test alternative hypotheses about which visual cues are relevant for guiding behavior, as a basis for developing computational models with realistic biological parameters. Results will be important beyond insect vision, for understanding depth detection and obstacle avoidance by visual mechanisms in general, and for developing useful machine vision and guidance systems in robotics. This project also provides excellent cross-disciplinary training of a postdoctoral woman neuroethologist in an exceptionally strong environment for computational neuroscience.