What can fish brains tell us about visual perception?

Abstract

Fish are a complex taxonomic group, whose diversity and distance from other vertebrates well suits the comparative investigation of brain and behavior: in fish species we observe substantial differences with respect to the telencephalic organization of other vertebrates and an astonishing variety in the development and complexity of pallial structures. We will concentrate on the contribution of research on fish behavioral biology for the understanding of the evolution of the visual system. We shall review evidence concerning perceptual effects that reflect fundamental principles of the visual system functioning, highlighting the similarities and differences between distant fish groups and with other vertebrates. We will focus on perceptual effects reflecting some of the main tasks that the visual system must attain. In particular, we will deal with subjective contours and optical illusions, invariance effects, second order motion and biological motion and, finally, perceptual binding of object properties in a unified higher level representation.

Why do animals differ in their susceptibility to geometrical illusions?

“…Rosa Salva et al (2014) propose an alternative theory: perhaps these discrepant results could be a product of the intensive training procedure used. In support of this explanation, Rosa Salva et al (2013) implemented a more naturalistic training and testing protocol and found that 4-day-old chicks were susceptible to the Ebbinghaus illusion in the same direction as humans, contradictory to findings in six-month-old chickens by Nakamura et al (2008Nakamura et al ( , 2014.…”

Editorial: What can simple brains teach us about how vision works

“…The perception of illusory shapes and boundaries is the subject of two reviews/opinions (Agrillo et al, 2013 ; Rosa Salva et al, 2014 ) and one research article (Fuss et al, 2014 ). Based on the observation that different groups of teleost fish exhibit both modal and amodal completion (e.g., perception of illusory contours, as in the Kanizsa figures), Agrillo et al ( 2013 ) argue that fish represent an excellent experimental model for studying the development of gestalt principles of visual perception in newborn animals.…”

Perception and discrimination of movement and biological motion patterns in fish

“…Douglas et al 2003) and visual lateralization (e.g. Bisazza and Brown 2011;Rogers et al 2013). There are several adaptive ocular specializations found in fish (Fernald 1988), with some species possessing such inventive structures as eye heaters (Block 1986;Fritsches et al 2005), a tapetum lucidum or lens pigmentation (Hueter et al 2004;Douglas et al 1998).…”