SFB 1372: Magnetoreception and navigation in vertebrates: from biophysics to brain and behaviour

几个世纪以来，人类一直对迁徙动物着迷，因为它们能够以人类导航员无法达到的精度，在数千公里内找到自己的路。SFB 1372的中心目标是实现对磁感应和脊椎动物导航的全面和多学科的了解，从生物物理机制到导航动物的自然行为，涵盖两者之间的每一步。为了实现这一点，我们需要了解磁性线索是如何被感知的，磁性信息是如何到达大脑进行处理的，与多感官导航相关的信息是如何在大脑中整合的，地图和指南针信息的神经关联是否存在于几平方米的实验室环境之外，迁移的遗传学基础是什么，以及线索操作和不同的感觉策略如何影响导航行为和全球迁移模式。拟议的SFB被构造为三个重叠和相互连接的部分，代表与导航相关的信号在动物体内进行的三个步骤：信号检测、神经处理和导航行为。建议的高度多学科的方法是需要的，以带来我们对脊椎动物的磁感应和导航的理解的巨大飞跃，这是我们期望实现的。

For centuries, humans have been fascinated by migratory animals being able to find their way over thousands of kilometres with a precision unobtainable for unaided human navigators. The central aim of SFB 1372 is to achieve a comprehensive and multidisciplinary understanding of magnetoreception and vertebrate navigation all the way from the biophysical mechanisms to the natural behaviour of navigating animals, covering every step in between. To achieve this, we need to understand how magnetic cues are sensed, how magnetic information reaches the brain for processing, how multisensory navigation-relevant information is integrated in the brain, whether neural correlates of map and compass information exist beyond a lab environment of a few square metres, what the genetic basis of migration is, and how cue manipulations and different sensory strategies affect navigation behaviours and global migration patterns. The proposed SFB is structured into three overlapping and interconnected sections representing the three steps that navigation-relevant signals take within the animal: Signal Detection, Neural Processing, and Navigation Behaviour. The proposed highly multidisciplinary approach is needed to bring about the quantum leap in our understanding of magnetoreception and navigation in vertebrates that we expect to achieve.