Perceptual Hypotheses in Drosophila Vision
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1
Rudolf-Virchow-Center for Experimental Biomedicine, University of Wuerzburg, Germany
Vision is an active process. One way to demonstrate activity in visual behavior is to present ambiguous visual stimuli that elicit several equally adaptive responses. A well-known example from psychophysics is the Necker cube (a) which is seen in two rivaling perspectives. The brain is said to respond to one of two equally valid perceptual hypotheses which subsequently may be confirmed (or not) by further sensory information possibly caused by the response. If a hypothesis is not confirmed, the brain tries the alternative one.
We use the flight simulator to expose Drosophila to ambiguous stimuli. The fly is suspended at a torque meter in the center of a 360° random dot pattern. The fly’s yaw torque is negatively proportional to the angular velocity of the panorama. If the fly intends to turn clockwise, the pattern rotates counterclockwise, and vice versa. If a constant rotatory bias is added to the panorama, the fly instantly adjusts its mean yaw torque to compensate for it (optomotor balance). In free flight, optomotor balance would correspond to a straight trajectory and a rotatory bias to the injury of one wing.
In (b) the fly is surrounded by two identical, concentric random dot patterns (shown flat). Both are driven by the fly’s yaw torque. We now add to the angular velocity of one pattern a constant clockwise rotatory bias [w(cw)], and to the angular velocity of the other pattern an equally fast constant counterclockwise bias [w(ccw)]. If the fly brain would simply process the summed output of its motion detectors, it would have only one yaw torque value (T=0) to obtain optomotor balance. However, Drosophila occasionally adjusts its mean yaw torque to the two yaw torque levels which compensate for the rotatory bias of one of the two patterns separately [w(cw) or w(ccw)]. This finding implies that from each set of dots moving coherently the fly can derive a separate 'hypothesis' about self-rotation, and tries to confirm it with the corresponding behavior.
Keywords:
Drosophila vision,
Brain activity,
Visual Perception,
active vision,
visual control of movement
Conference:
International Conference on Invertebrate Vision, Fjälkinge, Sweden, 1 Aug - 8 Aug, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Oral presentation preferred
Topic:
Motion vision
Citation:
Wolf
R,
Töpfer
F and
Heisenberg
M
(2019). Perceptual Hypotheses in Drosophila Vision.
Front. Physiol.
Conference Abstract:
International Conference on Invertebrate Vision.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fphys.2013.25.00089
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Received:
27 Feb 2013;
Published Online:
09 Dec 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Reinhard Wolf, Rudolf-Virchow-Center for Experimental Biomedicine, University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany, reinhard.wolf@virchow.uni-wuerzburg.de