Facilitation of neural responses to targets moving against optic flow

For the human observer, it can be difficult to follow the motion of small objects, especially when they move against background clutter. In contrast, insects efficiently do this, as evidenced by their ability to capture prey, pursue conspecifics, or defend territories, even in highly textured surrounds. We here recorded from target selective descending neurons (TSDNs), which likely subserve these impressive behaviors. To simulate the type of optic flow that would be generated by the pursuer’s own movements through the world, we used the motion of a perspective corrected sparse dot field. We show that hoverfly TSDN responses to target motion are suppressed when such optic flow moves syn-directional to the target. Indeed, neural responses are strongly suppressed when targets move over either translational sideslip or rotational yaw. More strikingly, we show that TSDNs are facilitated by optic flow moving counterdirectional to the target, if the target moves horizontally. Furthermore, we s..., Extracellular electrophysiology
The files show average responses during visual stimulation, “Facilitation of neural responses to targets moving against optic flow” -- Sarah Nicholas1 and Karin Nordström1,2
1Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia
2Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University, Box 593, 751 24 Uppsala, Sweden
9 September 2021
This readme file describes the data sets (compiled in Prism 7.0c for Mac OS X, GraphPad Software, San Diego, USA) accompanying the above publication. For detailed descriptions of data acquisition and analysis refer to the materials and methods section of this publication. For further questions please contact: [e-mail]
Data file: “Figure1.pzfz”
Data Table: “Figure 1D – Mean response across TSDNs”
Mean response from each unique neuron included in this study in response to a target moving across a white background (Group A) or a target moving across a stationary dot field (Group B), with each row containing data from the same neuron.
Data file: “F...,