Sensory control of 3D navigation: The making and breaking of spatial habits
Sensory and Behavioural Biology
Final Report Abstract
Despite initial setbacks delaying the implementation of the project, the applicant Dr. Daria Genzel-Wehrfritz was able to design, construct and establish a novel experimental system with which neural mechanisms underlying navigation in the 3D space can be investigated in freely behaving and flying bats in a controlled and efficient manner. Bats can now be trained - with efficient and robust training results - in a fully automated system while simultaneously behavior, echolocation, flight trajectories and neural activity is recorded. The system optimizes experimental time resulting in high quality behavioral data for a high number of experimental animals, but minimizing confounds through human interference. The flexibility incorporated in the room provides variance concerning task type and complexity and spatial layouts of setup elements as well as investigative details. This allows looking into questions of how for example sensory cues guiding navigation are encoded in the brain and how their saliency is reflected in neural circuits. Initial investigative goals had been directed towards the development of explorative to habitual behavior in the striatum. First behavioral results and consequent discussions with colleagues led to a scientific related but different question of how an under-investigated brain region (the retrosplenial cortex, RSC) - relevant for spatial memory and navigation - is involved in visuospatial integration during navigation. This brain region had prior to this project never been studied in bats before. First insight is being gained into how the neural coding of spatial information in the RSC is affected by a light cue which is serving as navigational landmarks but varying in its intensity. Preliminary results seem to verify that the RSC might be mediating relationships among multiple forms of spatial information relevant for navigational plasticity. Through manipulation of the intensity of the sensory cue we are now building a concept of how spatial variance and landmark reliability is computed by a cortical area which might potentially act as a relay or storage area for the hippocampal system. Results gained from this project and multiple follow-up investigations will provide invaluable insight into the principles underlying spatial navigation and help understand how they are computed in the mammalian brain. This will potentially be of clinical importance for patients who have difficulties in or have even lost spatial navigation abilities, for example Topographical Disorientation, Developmental Topographical Disorientation or Landmark Agnosia. The current project will be completed and ongoing follow-up projects expanded for the investigation of neural mechanisms underlying 3D navigation.
Publications
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(2018) Neuroethology of bat navigation. Current biology : CB 28 (17) R997-R1004
Genzel, Daria; Yovel, Yossi; Yartsev, Michael M.
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The automated flight room: Studying complex three-dimensional spatial navigation and its underlying neural codes in free-flying bats. SFN, Society for Neuroscience Conference, San Diego, CA, USA, (2018)
Genzel, D., Yartsev, M. M.
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The automated flight room: Studying three-dimensional spatial navigation and its underlying neural codes in free-flying bats. ICN, International Neuroethology Conference, Brisbane, Qld, Australia, (2018)
Genzel-Wehrfritz, D., Yartsev, M. M.
