Natural Patterns of Neural Activity: How Physiological Mechanisms are Orchestrated to Cope with Real Life

Kurtz, Rafael; Egelhaaf, Martin

doi:10.1385/mn:27:1:13

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 100 publications

(104 reference statements)

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“…Flies are widely used as a model system to investigate visual information processing and, in particular, the neural control underlying visually guided orientation behavior (Frye and Dickinson 2001;Egelhaaf et al 2002;Borst and Haag 2002;Kurtz and Egelhaaf 2003;Egelhaaf 2006;. Motion adaptation is one important topic in this context and has been analyzed with a wide range of stimulus paradigms mainly at the level of wide-field, motion-sensitive neurons, the lobulaplate tangential cells (LPTCs) in the third visual neuropile (for reviews see Clifford and Ibbotson 2002;Egelhaaf 2006;Kurtz 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

Impact of visual motion adaptation on neural responses to objects and its dependence on the temporal characteristics of optic flow

Liang

Kern

Kurtz

et al. 2011

Journal of Neurophysiology

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It is still unclear how sensory systems efficiently encode signals with statistics as experienced by animals in the real world and what role adaptation plays during normal behavior. Therefore, we studied the performance of visual motion-sensitive neurons of blowflies, the horizontal system neurons, with optic flow that was reconstructed from the head trajectories of semi-free-flying flies. To test how motion adaptation is affected by optic flow dynamics, we manipulated the seminatural optic flow by targeted modifications of the flight trajectories and assessed to what extent neuronal responses to an object located close to the flight trajectory depend on adaptation dynamics. For all types of adapting optic flow object-induced response increments were stronger in the adapted compared with the nonadapted state. Adaptation with optic flow characterized by the typical alternation between translational and rotational segments produced this effect but also adaptation with optic flow that lacked these distinguishing features and even pure rotation at a constant angular velocity. The enhancement of object-induced response increments had a direction-selective component because preferred-direction rotation and natural optic flow were more efficient adaptors than null-direction rotation. These results indicate that natural dynamics of optic flow is not a basic requirement to adapt neurons in a specific, presumably functionally beneficial way. Our findings are discussed in the light of adaptation mechanisms proposed on the basis of experiments previously done with conventional experimenter-defined stimuli.

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confidence: 99%

Impact of visual motion adaptation on neural responses to objects and its dependence on the temporal characteristics of optic flow

Liang

Kern

Kurtz

et al. 2011

Journal of Neurophysiology

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“…Two recent trends have changed the conditions to which cranium-mounted connections are subjected. Firstly, in research there is the growing realization that restrained movements significantly mask the true complexity of many neural processes (Kurtz and Egelhaaf 2003), and the same may be true for restraining the heads of monkeys during natural movement tasks. Secondly, the development of brainmachine interfaces (Schwartz et al 2006) has created a demand for cranium-mounted recording systems that can operate in unconstrained, real-world situations.…”

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confidence: 99%