From Vision to Action: Transforming the brain's decisions into goal-directed motor behavior
Final Report Abstract
In the course of evolution, vertebrates have developed the ability to encode, within fractions of a second, survival-relevant stimuli in their environment into neural activity patterns by means of specialized sensory organs, and to make rapid behavioral decisions based on these activity patterns. The central goal of our research is to elucidate the mechanisms in the vertebrate brain that underlie such rapid, sensory-driven decision making processes. To this end, we use modern fluorescence microscopy and electrophysiological methods to observe the flow of information along sensorimotor pathways in the intact brain and investigate the neurons involved and their synaptic connections. For our studies, we use zebrafish larvae: a simple vertebrate model that, due to its small size, optical transparency and relatively small number of 100,000- 200,000 neurons, allows us to elucidate the mechanisms of neuronal signal processing in the intact organism in detail. Our earlier work has already contributed significantly to identifying, in the larval visual system, circuit motifs that are involved in perceptual decision-making behavior and the control of motor patterns. We found that critical stimulus attributes, such as the size and direction of motion of a visual stimulus, are represented in different layers of the optic tectum where they are further processed by different types of neurons. Building on this, we now investigate how these sensory signals are processed by intratectal synaptic circuit motifs, integrated with motor-related signals reflecting the animal’s own motion, and ultimately result in neuronal activity patterns that trigger movement commands in downstream motor areas of the midbrain and hindbrain and lead to observable behavioral output. In particular, our current line of research focuses on how the brain solves the fundamental problem to distinguish, when evaluating visual stimuli, whether the stimulus patterns arriving at the retina originate from the movement of external objects (e.g. prey or predator) or whether they are the result of the animal's own movement, for example due to saccadic eye movement or locomotion. How the brain makes this critical distinction is not well understood. In recent research, we discovered a mechanism for how inhibitory synaptic signals in the optic tectum suppress the processing of visual stimuli during the animal’s own locomotion, i.e. the saccadelike swim bouts typical for larval swimming at this stage. Using high-resolution fluorescence microscopy methods, we were able to obtain evidence for circuit components involved in this process in the tectum and neighboring brain regions. This opens new avenues for future research on complex brain function at the cellular and synaptic level. Such mechanisms, whereby the brain integrates the processing of external sensory stimuli with internal representations of an animal’s own movement presumably also play a central role in the formation of complex internal models of the external world in the brain. In summary, the Heisenberg Program has allowed me to establish a state-of-the-art research program in a highly suitable academic environment and to develop innovative approaches to address how conserved visual centers in the vertebrate brain integrate sensory and motor information, resulting in effective control of goal-directed movement sequences and actions.
Publications
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Connectomic analysis of the larval zebrafish spinal cord (01.12.2018). International Imaging Structure and Function in the Zebrafish Brain Conference, Brighton/UK. Oral presentation
Bollmann, J. H.
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In search of functional principles: analysis of zebrafish visuomotor function at the level of synapses, cells and circuits (06.06.2018). 7th International Caesar Conference, Center of Advanced European Studies and Research, Bonn. Oral presentation
Bollmann, J. H.
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The zebrafish visual system: from circuits to behavior (24.04.2018 - 25.04.2018). Forschergruppe 2325 International Symposium, Frankfurt. Oral presentation
Bollmann, J. H.
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Volume EM Reconstruction of Spinal Cord Reveals Wiring Specificity in Speed-Related Motor Circuits. Cell Reports, 23(10), 2942-2954.
Svara, Fabian N.; Kornfeld, Jörgen; Denk, Winfried & Bollmann, Johann H.
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"Spiking activity and synaptic input structure in tectal cells during fictive visuomotor behaviors in the larval zebrafish brain" (20.11.2019 - 23.11.2019). Cold Spring Harbor Meeting on Neural Circuits and Behavior. Oral presentation
Bollmann, J. H.
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The Zebrafish Visual System: From Circuits to Behavior. Annual Review of Vision Science, 5(1), 269-293.
Bollmann, Johann H.
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A synaptic corollary discharge signal suppresses midbrain visual processing during saccade-like locomotion. Posted December 21, 2022. 2022.
Ali, M. A., Lischka, K., Preuss, S. J , Trivedi, C. A. & Bollmann, J. H.
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Analysis of neural signals during visual information processing in the larval visual system. In: Imaging Structure and Function of the Zebrafish Brain Conference 2022, Trondheim Norway. Poster Presentation. (2022)
Ali, M. A., Lischka, K. & Bollmann, J. H.
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Motion vision: Course control in the developing visual system. Current Biology, 32(11), R520-R523.
Ali, Mir Ahsan & Bollmann, Johann H.
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Tectal cell activity during visuomotor processing underlying visually-guided behavior in larval zebrafish. In: Imaging Structure and Function of the Zebrafish Brain Conference 2022, Trondheim Norway. Poster
Lischka, K., Ali, M. A. & Bollmann, J. H.
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A synaptic corollary discharge signal suppresses midbrain visual processing during saccade-like locomotion. Nature Communications, 14(1).
Ali, Mir Ahsan; Lischka, Katharina; Preuss, Stephanie J.; Trivedi, Chintan A. & Bollmann, Johann H.
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Corollary discharge in the optic tectum inhibits visual processing during self-motion. In: 15th Göttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society. Poster presentation. (2023)
Bollmann, J. H., Ali, M. A. & Lischka, K.
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Corollary_Discharge. Software package written in MatLab for signal analysis in time series data from calcium imaging
Bollmannlab
