Motor patterns and sensory consequence: dynamic behavior and the neuronal processing of electric flow information.

关于动物行为的感觉-运动技能、学习和记忆形成的定量实验往往会错过自然动物行为的丰富性，并且可能导致对行为的潜在神经控制的模型过于简化。因此，在自然条件下的实验是理解感觉-运动相互作用的重要补充，但它们面临着独特的技术挑战，包括在感觉流中识别相关线索的问题。在Mormyrid弱电鱼中，这个问题可以通过利用它们的不连续电感觉采样来克服：由于动物主动决定何时产生用于探索环境的短电信号，因此可以精确地定义正在处理的感觉输入。因此，这些鱼提供了一种特殊的潜力，可以更好地理解与主动感知有关的感觉-运动回路。为了开发这一潜力，我们想获得第一个定量分析的感觉流在无约束的电感觉行为的Mormyrid （Gnathonemus petersii）。为了确定运动行为和相关感觉流的模式，我们将首先编译一个定量的原型行为序列档案，并在此基础上重建自然行为序列的感觉输入。通过比较不同行为的感觉流，一个目标是了解动物是否以及如何积极地构建它们的感觉输入。为了进一步量化嵌入在感觉流中的信息，我们将比较两个极端：从单个环境采样中获得的感觉阵列信息与考虑在电定位期间单个受体输入的时间变化时获得的信息，即对感觉输入的空间分析与时间分析。由此，我们将确定包含在时间雕刻的感觉流中的感知线索，解决时空动态如何帮助提取或增强重要的感觉特征。弱电鱼积极塑造其感觉流模式以促进信息提取的假设也将在神经元水平上进行研究：到目前为止，尚不清楚电感觉处理的早期阶段是否以及在多大程度上处理电感觉时空模式。这将通过在受控闭环范例中记录ELL单个单元活动来进行研究，其中感知的时间由动物在受到移动物体刺激时控制。本研究的重点是研究物体运动如何影响第一中央加工区定位线索的编码。由于到目前为止，mormords还没有解决这个问题，我们将研究对线性物体轨迹的反应，重点关注刺激条件下动态信息编码与静态信息编码之间的信息理论驱动比较。

Quantitative experiments on animal behavior concerning sensory-motor skills, learning and memory formation often miss much of the richness of natural animal behavior, and are likely to result in oversimplified models of the underlying neural control of behavior. Experiments under naturalistic conditions are therefore an important complement to the understanding of sensory-motor interaction, but they face unique technical challenges, including the problem of identifying relevant cues in the sensory flow. In Mormyrid weakly electric fishes this problem can be overcome by making use of their discontinuous electrical sensory sampling: since animals actively decide when the short electric signals for exploring the environment are generated, the sensory input that is being processed can be exactly defined. These fish thus offer an exceptional potential for a better understanding of the sensory-motor loops involved in active sensing in general.To exploit this potential we want to obtain the first quantitative analysis of sensory flow in unrestrained electrosensory behavior of Mormyrid fish (Gnathonemus petersii). To determine patterns in motor behavior and the associated sensory flow we will first compile an archive of quantitative prototypical behavioral sequences and based on these reconstruct the sensory input of natural behavioral sequences. By comparing the sensory flow of different behaviors one goal is to comprehend if and how animals actively structure their sensory input. To further quantify the information embedded in the sensory flow we will compare two extremes: the information available to the sensory array from a single sampling of the environment versus the information available when considering the temporal change of the input at a single receptor during electrolocation, i.e. a spatial versus a temporal analysis of the sensory input. From this we will determine the perceptual cues contained in the temporally sculpted sensory flow, addressing how spatiotemporal dynamics help in extracting or enhancing sensory features of importance.The hypothesis that weakly electric fish actively shape their sensory flow patterns to facilitate information extraction will be studied in the neuronal level as well: up to know it is unknown if and to what extend early stages of electrosensory processing treat electrosensory spatiotemporal patterns. This will be investigated by recording ELL single unit activity in a controlled closed-loop paradigm, in which the timing of sensing is controlled by the animal while being stimulated with moving objects. The main focus will be to study how object motion influences the encoding of localization cues in the first central processing area. As this has not been addressed in Mormyrids thus far, we will study responses to linear object trajectories, focusing on information-theoretically driven comparison between dynamical information encoding versus static information encoding for stimulus conditions.