It is imperative that an animal have the ability to track its own motion within its immediate surroundings. It gives the necessary basis for decision making that leads to appropriate behavioral responses. It is our goal to implement insect-like body tracking capabilities into a robotic controller and have this serve as the first step toward adaptive robotic behavior. In an attempt to tackle the first step of body tracking without GPS or other external information, we have turned to arthropod neurophysiology as inspiration. The insect brain structure called the central complex (CX) is thought to be vital for sensory integration and body position tracking. The mechanisms behind sensory integration are immensely complex, but it was found to be done with an elegant neuronal architecture. Based on this architecture, we assembled a dynamical neural model of the functional core of the central complex, two structures called the protocerebral bridge and the ellipsoid body, in a simulation environment. Using non-spiking neuronal dynamics, our simulation was able to recreate in vivo behavior such as correlating body rotation direction and speed to activity bump dynamics within the ellipsoid body of the central complex. This model serves as the first step towards using idiothetic cues to track body position and orientation determination, which is critical for homing after exploring new environments and other navigational tasks.
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The Role of Central Complex Neurons in Prey Detection and Tracking in the Freely Moving Praying Mantis (Tenodera sinensis)
Complex tasks like hunting moving prey in an unpredictable environment require high levels of motor and sensory integration. An animal needs to detect and track suitable prey objects, measure their distance and orientation relative to its own position, and finally produce the correct motor output to approach and capture the prey. In the insect brain, the central complex (CX) is one target area where integration is likely to take place. In this study, we performed extracellular multi-unit recordings on the CX of freely hunting praying mantises (
- Award ID(s):
- 1704366
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10467419
- Publisher / Repository:
- Frontiers Journals
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Neural Circuits
- Volume:
- 16
- ISSN:
- 1662-5110
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Louis, Matthieu (Ed.)How we interact with our environment largely depends on both the external cues presented by our surroundings and the internal state from within. Internal states are the ever-changing physiological conditions that communicate the immediate survival needs and motivate the animal to behaviorally fulfill them. Satiety level constitutes such a state, and therefore has a dynamic influence on the output behaviors of an animal. In predatory insects like the praying mantis, hunting tactics, grooming, and mating have been shown to change hierarchical organization of behaviors depending on satiety. Here, we analyze behavior sequences of freely hunting praying mantises ( Tenodera sinensis ) to explore potential differences in sequential patterning of behavior as a correlate of satiety. First, our data supports previous work that showed starved praying mantises were not just more often attentive to prey, but also more often attentive to further prey. This was indicated by the increased time fraction spent in attentive bouts such as prey monitoring, head turns (to track prey), translations (closing the distance to the prey), and more strike attempts. With increasing satiety, praying mantises showed reduced time in these behaviors and exhibited them primarily towards close-proximity prey. Furthermore, our data demonstrates that during states of starvation, the praying mantis exhibits a stereotyped pattern of behavior that is highly motivated by prey capture. As satiety increased, the sequenced behaviors became more variable, indicating a shift away from the necessity of prey capture to more fluid presentations of behavior assembly.more » « less
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Abstract Classic work using the stop-signal task has shown that humans can use inhibitory control to cancel already initiated movements. Subsequent work revealed that inhibitory control can be proactively recruited in anticipation of a potential stop-signal, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful movement cancellation. However, the exact neurophysiological effects of proactive inhibitory control on the motor system are still unclear. On the basis of classic views of sensorimotor β-band activity, as well as recent findings demonstrating the burst-like nature of this signal, we recently proposed that proactive inhibitory control is implemented by influencing the rate of sensorimotor β-bursts during movement initiation. Here, we directly tested this hypothesis using scalp EEG recordings of β-band activity in 41 healthy human adults during a bimanual RT task. By comparing motor responses made in two different contexts—during blocks with or without stop-signals—we found that premovement β-burst rates over both contralateral and ipsilateral sensorimotor areas were increased in stop-signal blocks compared to pure-go blocks. Moreover, the degree of this burst rate difference indexed the behavioral implementation of proactive inhibition (i.e., the degree of anticipatory response slowing in the stop-signal blocks). Finally, exploratory analyses showed that these condition differences were explained by a significant increase in β bursting that was already present during baseline period before the movement initiation signal. Together, this suggests that the strategic deployment of proactive inhibitory motor control is implemented by upregulating the tonic inhibition of the motor system, signified by increased sensorimotor β-bursting both before and after signals to initiate a movement.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2022.893004
