Comparative analysis of electrosensory processing

电传感处理的比较分析

• 批准号: 293306-2009
• 负责人: Krahe, Rüdiger
• 金额: $ 2.19万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2010-01-01 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=456706
• 关键词: Comparative; analysis; electrosensory; processing

Animals rely on their sense organs to collect information on their environment. The brain then needs to extract information that is relevant for behavioural decisions. This involves, for example, the segregation of objects from their background as well as the determination of important object features such as size, distance, or speed of movement. The successful performance in these tasks enables animals to forage, to escape predators, and to communicate. If we are to understand the mechanisms by which the brain solves these problems, we first need to understand what the relevant sensory stimuli are that a given organism needs to extract and then we can ask the appropriate questions about how the nervous system accomplishes this task. Weakly electric fish have become a prime model system in which to study how the brain processes sensory information, because the sensory stimuli (electric fields) are easy to measure and reproduce in an experimental setting and because the electrosensory system is accessible for neurophysiological experimentation. Electric fish probe their environment with self-generated electric fields and sense perturbations of the electric field with electroreceptors in their skin. My goal is to compare how different types of electric fish that use different probing strategies (discrete pulses versus continuous sampling) process the categorically different incoming sensory information. The neural circuits used for sampling information on the environment are virtually identical in the two groups, yet they have to contend with very different stimuli. The results of this investigation will shed light on how sensory systems evolve to process novel types of information caused by a change in interaction with the environment.

动物依靠它们的感觉器官来收集有关环境的信息。然后，大脑需要提取与行为决策相关的信息。例如，这涉及将物体与其背景分离，以及确定重要的物体特征，如大小、距离或移动速度。这些任务的成功执行使动物能够觅食，逃避捕食者和交流。如果我们要了解大脑解决这些问题的机制，我们首先需要了解特定生物体需要提取的相关感官刺激是什么，然后我们可以提出关于神经系统如何完成这项任务的适当问题。 弱电鱼已经成为研究大脑如何处理感觉信息的主要模型系统，因为感觉刺激（电场）很容易在实验环境中测量和再现，而且因为电感觉系统可以用于神经生理学实验。电鱼用自己产生的电场探测环境，用皮肤上的电感受器感知电场的扰动。我的目标是比较不同类型的电鱼如何使用不同的探测策略（离散脉冲与连续采样）处理不同的感官信息。这两组人用于采集环境信息的神经回路几乎是相同的，但他们必须应对截然不同的刺激。这项研究的结果将揭示感觉系统如何进化以处理由与环境相互作用的变化引起的新型信息。