When senses work together: how multimodal integration helps you stay alive

NICOLÁS MARTORELL; VIOLETA MEDAN

Ciudad de Córdoba

Congreso; Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias 2018; 2018

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

An essential task of the nervous system is to make behaviorally adaptive decisions, based on various sources of information coming from the environment. In this context, multisensory integration is the process that combines the different sensory signals associated to a single event. Multisensory integration increases the likelihood of detecting a relevant event, especially when the unimodal information is limited or ambiguous. This is especially critical when the task is related to threat avoidance: slight enhancement on detection of a predator cues can determine an animal?s survival. In fish, the escape response (C-start) is a robust overt behavior easy to quantify with a well understood neuronal basis. Here we analyze behavioral responses of goldfish (Carassius auratus) to visual and auditory stimuli, shown individually or combined, and quantify the escape probability. We show how sensory cues that individually trigger responses with a low rate combine to enhance risk detection. Complete information about an event is infrequent in real life scenarios. Here we discuss how animals use available sources of information for optimal decision making.