Medullary Electrosensory Processing

Wesleyan University, Middletown CT

Investigators

Abstract

In all vertebrate animals sophisticated brain processes must function to recognize and eliminate sensory stimulation that is due to the animal's own movements and does not carry any useful information about the outside world. We seek to understand the mechanisms by which this is accomplished by studying the electrosensory system in a fish in which they are extremely well developed. Using methods for reording the responses of individual nerve cells in the skate hindbrain to stimuli which we artificially associate with the fish's movements, we call follow the process by which the brain learns to recognize and eliminate the effects of these stimuli which are treated as 'self'. Further physiological studies of single nerve cells during manipulation of the inputs to those cells are designed to reveal the cellular mechanisms for learning. Preliminary studies have demonstrated that the learning is based on changes in a specialized circuit in the hindbrain termed a paralled fiber system. The same circuit is found in the brains of all vertebrates and so our experiments promise to provide insights into how this circuit functions more generally.