A fish that subtracts its own electrical signals to better "see" through its troubled habitat – ScienceDaily



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The Elephant-nosed Fish Gnathonemus petersii relies on electricity to find food and navigate through the obstacles that screen its native rivers and African troubles . On July 11, in the journal Neuron Columbia University researchers present evidence that the fish's ability to "see" an "electrical image" of its environment requires it to to filter one's own electrical disturbances

". We needed to determine if being able to predict its own electrical signals would help the fish better detect environmental cues, "says Nathaniel Sawtell, neuroscientist at Zuckerman's Brain Behavior Brain Institute. "Using both neural recordings and behavioral experiments, we have shown that these predictions known as negative images actually help fish to detect external signals related to prey."

The elephant fish has two specialized systems that help it feel its environment – a pbadive system that accords with the tiny electric signatures of everything that lives in its environment, including its prey, and an active system that voluntarily emits short pulses of electricity. The fish uses these electrical impulses both to communicate with other electric fish and to detect its environment by painting an "electric image" for easy navigation.

"Fish electrical impulses cause large neural responses that interfere with the pbadive system," says Sawtell. "Our work shows how changes in neural connections produce negative images to negate this interference."

that previous studies speculated that the nose-elephant fish could generate these negative images, no evidence had demonstrated their functional importance.But the authors have shown that delivering a drug that interfered with the formation of negative images blinded essentially fish with external electrical signals.

"An important part of this work has been the integration of experimental and theoretical approaches to the understanding of neural circuits" says Sawtell. "From here we try to take the lessons we learned from electric fish and apply them to related systems, incl. omitted the mammalian cerebellum and the auditory system. "

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