Echolocation on the wing: perception and neural representation of echo-acoustic flow fields in bats

翅膀上的回声定位：蝙蝠回声声流场的感知和神经表征

• 批准号: 241509399
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Uwe Firzlaff
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Zoologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2012-12-31 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/241509399?language=en
• 关键词: Echolocation; wing; perception; neural; representation

Self motion induces correlated changes in the percept of our environment: This close link between action and perception has been extensively studied in the visual system, where linear motion induces the percept of a visual flow field. Visual flow-fields provide crucial information both about the spatial layout between objects and the distance of the assessor to these objects. However, this information can not only be gained visually: Echolocating bats, flying in complete darkness through highly cluttered 3D environments, are very likely to exploit echo-acoustic flow-field information for navigation: Previous work has highlighted the exceptional capabilities of bats, and underlying neural processes, to extract both spatial and temporal information from returning echoes for reconstructing 3D layouts of their environment and objects within. Perception and neural representation of the dynamical changes of spatio-temporal representation of space, i.e., the echo-acoustic flow field a bat will experience in flight are, however, largely unknown.This proposal aims to investigate the perceptual capabilities and neurophysiological basis of echo-acoustic flow-field analysis in bats. To this aim a combined psychophysical and electrophysiological approach is used: Bats will be trained on linear flight in a state-of-the-art wind tunnel and presented with virtual echo-acoustic flow fields, generated through complex spatio-temporal real-time processing and playback of sonar emissions produced by the bats in flight. As in visual flow-field research, recruiting virtual echo-acoustic flow fields allows for detailed, hypothesis-driven manipulation of the flow-field information and formal psychophysical assessment of the perceptual sensitivity of the bats to these manipulations.Complementing the psychophysical research, our recent electrophysiological work has shown that the well-known chronotopic arrangement in dorsal auditory cortex (i.e., the topographic representation of echo delay) co-varies with a systematic spatial tuning of the neurons. This co variation of the neural code for distance and azimuth supports an explicit neural code for echo acoustic flow fields. This proposal aims to evaluate the function of this candidate neural substrate with advanced stimulation- and recording techniques, applied first under anesthesia and subsequently in the awake and behaving animal in flight.

自我运动引起我们对环境的感知的相关变化：在视觉系统中，行为和感知之间的这种密切联系已经得到了广泛的研究，其中线性运动引起视觉流场的感知。视觉流场提供了关于物体之间的空间布局和评估者到这些物体的距离的重要信息。然而，这些信息不仅可以通过视觉获得：回声定位蝙蝠，在完全黑暗的高度混乱的3D环境中飞行，很可能利用回声流场信息进行导航：先前的研究强调了蝙蝠的特殊能力，以及潜在的神经过程，从返回的回波中提取空间和时间信息，用于重建其环境和物体的3D布局。空间时空表示动态变化的感知和神经表示，即，然而，蝙蝠在飞行中所经历的回声声学流场在很大程度上是未知的。2本建议旨在研究蝙蝠回声声学流场分析的感知能力和神经生理学基础。为此目的，结合心理物理学和电生理学的方法是使用：蝙蝠将在线性飞行训练在一个国家的最先进的风洞，并提出了虚拟回声声学流场，通过复杂的时空实时处理和回放的声纳发射所产生的蝙蝠在飞行中。在视觉流场研究中，招募虚拟回声声学流场允许详细的、假设驱动的流场信息操纵和对蝙蝠对这些操纵的感知灵敏度的正式心理物理评估。作为心理物理研究的补充，我们最近的电生理工作表明，背侧听觉皮层中众所周知的时间位置安排（即，回波延迟的地形表示）与神经元的系统空间调谐共同变化。这种距离和方位角的神经代码的共同变化支持回波声学流场的显式神经代码。该提案旨在评估该候选神经基质的功能，并采用先进的刺激和记录技术，首先在麻醉下应用，然后在飞行中的清醒和行为动物中应用。