Current Stimulation of the Midbrain Nucleus in Pigeons for Avian Flight Control

Abstract

A number of research attempts to understand and modulate sensory and motor skills that are beyond the capability of humans have been underway. They have mainly been expounded in rodent models, where numerous reports of controlling movement to reach target locations by brain stimulation have been achieved. However, in the case of birds, although basic research on movement control has been conducted, the brain nuclei that are triggering these movements have yet to be established. In order to fully control flight navigation in birds, the basic central nervous system involved in flight behavior should be understood comprehensively, and functional maps of the birds’ brains to study the possibility of flight control need to be clarified. Here, we established a stable stereotactic surgery to implant multi-wire electrode arrays and electrically stimulated several nuclei of the pigeon’s brain. A multi-channel electrode array and a wireless stimulation system were implanted in thirteen pigeons. The pigeons' flight trajectories on electrical stimulation of the cerebral nuclei were monitored and analyzed by a 3D motion tracking program to evaluate the behavioral change, and the exact stimulation site in the brain was confirmed by the postmortem histological examination. Among them, five pigeons were able to induce right and left body turns by stimulating the nuclei of the tractus occipito-mesencephalicus (OM), nucleus taeniae (TN), or nucleus rotundus (RT); the nuclei of tractus septo-mesencephalicus (TSM) or archistriatum ventrale (AV) were stimulated to induce flight aviation for flapping and take-off with five pigeons.

The role of posterior pallial amygdala in mediating motor behaviors in pigeons

“…The mammalian amygdala initiates predation behavior and affects the expression of appetite behavior 21 , 22 . Till date, limited studies have examined the role of the amygdala in the expression of motor behaviors in birds, and existing studies have shown that the amygdala mediate distinct aspects of appetitive extinction learning 23 , and TnA could induce right and left body turns in pigeon 24 . The role of PoA in the regulation of motor behavior is not clear.…”

Progress of Micro-Stimulation Techniques to Alter Pigeons’ Motor Behavior: A Review from the Perspectives of the Neural Basis and Neuro-Devices

“…The third is the category targeted in the midbrain motor regions responsible for coordinating the movement process to directly control motion. These numerous related nuclei include torus semicircularis (ToS) [39], nucleus intercollicularis (ICo) [10,39], substantia grisea et fibrosa periventricularis (SGP) [39][40][41], formatio reticularismedialis mesencephali (FRM) [11], locus ceruleus (LoC) [10], as well as the nucleus rotundus (RT), tractus occipitomesencephalicus (OM), nucleus taeniae (TN), tractus septo-mesencephalicus (TSM), and archistriatum ventral (AV) [18]. The stimulation-based control targeted in the midbrain motor regions bypasses the complex upward processes of information integration, judgment, and motion planning decision-making, significantly reducing potential interference during the control [10].…”

“…The role of the state perception module is to obtain real-time status of pigeons, to execute control of the current position, posture, or neural dynamic information. For indoor control tasks, existing research mainly relies on real-time position information recorded by motion tracking systems [18] or visual observations of pigeon behavior by operators [12]. In outdoor open environments, especially in long-distance control tasks, most studies choose to use a global positioning system (GPS) to obtain real-time position status of pigeons [6,42] to overcome the limitation of the infeasible visual observation and the difficult construction of motion capture systems.…”

“…The team led by Su from SDUST, who first conducted a series of pigeon robot studies in China, initially chose brain regions related to fear and pain perception as the targets to induce specific motion in pigeons [5]. Then, the teams led by Dai from NUAA [10] and Kim from SNU [18] conducted further research targeting more regions in the midbrain motion area, clarifying the relationship between the nuclei in pigeons' midbrain and their motor functions. Their efforts provided more solid experimental evidence for the diversification of control targets to control pigeon motion.…”

Modulation Steering Motion by Quantitative Electrical Stimulation in Pigeon Robots

“…Small animal robots exhibit outstanding adaptability to diverse application scenarios, can achieve effectively autonomous obstacle avoidance in complex environments, and can mitigate against external interference, making them a popular choice for disaster relief and topographic surveys [16][17][18][19][20]. Animal robots have become a highly anticipated frontier field, and the research on pigeon robots is also in full swing [15,[21][22][23][24]. At present, the research on pigeon robots is facing a bottleneck, and it is still difficult to realize the fine control of the flight action of it through the brain-computer interface.…”