Virtual electrosensory landscapes for the behavioural analysis of motion processing

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Imagine the different sensations you perceive as you first touch a rough surface with a motionless fingertip, and then with back-and-forth movements at various speeds. These changes in perception can tell us about the dynamic properties of touch receptors in the skin, as well as those of the brain networks involved in somatosensory information processing. Such "active sensing" is used by a variety of sensory systems. Yet, in general, we know little about how movement of a sensory structure (like your finger tip or your eye) is coordinated with the dynamics of neural processing to optimize the acquisition of sensory information. My research focuses on active sensing and neural dynamics in the weakly electric knifefish. These fish are experts in sensory processing. They detect objects in their surroundings by monitoring minute changes in their self-generated electric field, despite high levels of natural interference, or noise. To do this, they probe their environment with stereotyped back-and-forth swimming movements, thus directly influencing the electrosensory signals encoded by the specialized electroreceptors on their skin. I will discover how such movements interact with sensory processing by creating a system for generating virtual electrosensory landscapes. The flexibility and precise control enabled by this approach will allow us to perform detailed behavioural experiments that let the fish tell us how active sensing works.