Discrimination of features in natural scenes by a dragonfly neuron
Files
(Published version)
Date
2011
Authors
Wiederman, S.
O'Carroll, D.
Editors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Journal article
Citation
The Journal of Neuroscience, 2011; 31(19):7141-7144
Statement of Responsibility
Steven D. Wiederman and David C. O'Carroll
Conference Name
Abstract
Flying insects engage in spectacular high-speed pursuit of targets, requiring visual discrimination of moving objects against cluttered backgrounds. As a first step toward understanding the neural basis for this complex task, we used computational modeling of insect small target motion detector (STMD) neurons to predict responses to features within natural scenes and then compared this with responses recorded from an identified STMD neuron in the dragonfly brain (Hemicordulia tau). A surprising model prediction confirmed by our electrophysiological recordings is that even heavily cluttered scenes contain very few features that excite these neurons, due largely to their exquisite tuning for small features. We also show that very subtle manipulations of the image cause dramatic changes in the response of this neuron, because of the complex inhibitory and facilitatory interactions within the receptive field.
School/Discipline
Dissertation Note
Provenance
Description
Access Status
Rights
Copyright © 2011 the authors. Authors grant JNeurosci a license to publish their work and copyright remains with the author. Material published from 2010 to 2014 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-NC-SA).