Event Title

Session B8: The Representation of Three-Dimensional Space in Fish

Location

Groningen, The Netherlands

Event Website

http://fishpassage.umass.edu/

Start Date

24-6-2015 2:00 PM

End Date

24-6-2015 2:15 PM

Description

Abstract:

To navigate around their local environment, animals must recognise their own position with respect to their goal. This task can be completed successfully if they have a representation of space in their brain, built upon learning and remembering environmental features. This representation can be thought of as a neural map. Previous research has focused on how animals navigate horizontally, however most must also move vertically. This is exemplified by flying or swimming animals, which move with six degrees of freedom (unlike surface constrained animals that move with three). By using behavioural experimental and theoretical approaches, we study both the sensory basis of 3D navigation in fish and also how the information gained from the environment is learned and remembered. We show that the vertical and horizontal components of space are stored separately in the fishes’ representation of space, which simplifies the problem of encoding complex information in the brain, and that the vertical axis contains particularly salient spatial cues, including hydrostatic pressure.

We also demonstrate that fish that swim freely through a volume of water are able to accurately learn and remember 3D metric information – that is, distance and direction. Our work suggests that the spatial information obtained by a fish’s sensory systems is pulled together into a supramodal representation of space that is similar to the place cells in the hippocampus of mammals. We also suggest the putative neurones that encode space in fish fire with a spherical distribution, allowing the animals to navigate effectively in three-dimensions.

Comments

Presenting Author Bio: I received a PhD from the University Oxford (Department of Zoology) in 1998 on the social basis of pigeon navigation before taking up a 1year post-doctorate position in UNAM, Mexico. I returned to Oxford as an independent Junior Research Fellow of Keble College where I started to work on spatial cognition, focussing particularly on the use of the lateral line in blind Mexican cave fish. This developed into a larger project on navigation in fishes for which I was supported by a Royal Society Research Fellowship and a L’Oreal Women in Science Fellowship. I became a tenured Associate Professor in Zoology at Oxford in 2009 conjoined with a Tutorial Fellowship at St John’s College. The main theme of my research concerns the study of spatial cognition. My group and I use fish as model systems to understand how animals perceive, learn and remember spatial information from their local environment, and how they use this information to orient efficiently. Our work not only has a fundamental importance to animals’ survival and success, but also acts as a model for the study of sensory ecology, learning and memory.

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Jun 24th, 2:00 PM Jun 24th, 2:15 PM

Session B8: The Representation of Three-Dimensional Space in Fish

Groningen, The Netherlands

Abstract:

To navigate around their local environment, animals must recognise their own position with respect to their goal. This task can be completed successfully if they have a representation of space in their brain, built upon learning and remembering environmental features. This representation can be thought of as a neural map. Previous research has focused on how animals navigate horizontally, however most must also move vertically. This is exemplified by flying or swimming animals, which move with six degrees of freedom (unlike surface constrained animals that move with three). By using behavioural experimental and theoretical approaches, we study both the sensory basis of 3D navigation in fish and also how the information gained from the environment is learned and remembered. We show that the vertical and horizontal components of space are stored separately in the fishes’ representation of space, which simplifies the problem of encoding complex information in the brain, and that the vertical axis contains particularly salient spatial cues, including hydrostatic pressure.

We also demonstrate that fish that swim freely through a volume of water are able to accurately learn and remember 3D metric information – that is, distance and direction. Our work suggests that the spatial information obtained by a fish’s sensory systems is pulled together into a supramodal representation of space that is similar to the place cells in the hippocampus of mammals. We also suggest the putative neurones that encode space in fish fire with a spherical distribution, allowing the animals to navigate effectively in three-dimensions.

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/fishpassage_conference/2015/June24/57