Herrn Prof. Jan Benda (Universität Tübingen) referiert zum Thema:
"Court and spark in the wild: communications at the limits of sensation"
Abstract:
The tuning of peripheral sensory systems is expected to cover the distribution of relevant natural stimuli such that behaviourally important features are reliably encoded. Experimental studies that
relate natural stimuli and sensory tuning to behavioural relevance are largely missing. Here we show highly relevant natural stimuli that are robustly processed despite a striking mismatch with peripheral sensory tuning. We tracked and quantified natural communication behaviour of
weakly electric fish in their Neotropical habitats with high spatio-temporal resolution. Unexpectedly, the tuning of electroreceptors did not match the distribution of natural stimuli. However, the observed behavioural interactions unequivocally demonstrate that higher
processing stages robustly detect and classify communication signals despite non-optimal representations in the periphery. Our detailed quantification of natural behaviour reveals unexpected but important stimulus regimes that have not been explored because of the research
focus on the tuning of peripheral and central sensory neurons alone.
Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen des Kolloquiums Biologie und Umweltwissenschaften/Departmen für Neurowissenschaften statt.