Whole-field visual motion drives swimming in larval zebrafish via a stochastic process

Ruben Portugues, Martin Haesemeyer, Mirella L. Blum, Florian Engert

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

Caudo-rostral whole-field visual motion elicits forward locomotion in many organisms, including larval zebrafish. Here, we investigate the dependence on the latency to initiate this forward swimming as a function of the speed of the visual motion. We show that latency is highly dependent on speed for slow speeds (<10 mm s-1) and then plateaus for higher values. Typical latencies are >1.5 s, which is much longer than neuronal transduction processes. What mechanisms underlie these long latencies? We propose two alternative, biologically inspired models that could account for this latency to initiate swimming: an integrate and fire model, which is history dependent, and a stochastic Poisson model, which has no history dependence. We use these models to predict the behavior of larvae when presented with whole-field motion of varying speed and find that the stochastic process shows better agreement with the experimental data. Finally, we discuss possible neuronal implementations of these models.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1433-1443
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Experimental Biology
Volume218
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 May 2015
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Locomotion initiation
  • Optomotor response
  • Zebrafish

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Whole-field visual motion drives swimming in larval zebrafish via a stochastic process'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this