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

MEDAN, VIOLETA; MARTORELL, NICOLÁS

Ciudad de Córdoba

Congreso; Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias; 2018

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

An essential task of the nervous system is to make behaviorally adaptive decisions, basedon various sources of information coming from the environment. In this context, multisensoryintegration is the process that combines the different sensory signals associated to a singleevent. Multisensory integration increases the likelihood of detecting a relevant event,especially when the unimodal information is limited or ambiguous. This is especially criticalwhen the task is related to threat avoidance: slight enhancement on detection of a predatorcues can determine an animal?s survival. In fish, the escape response (C-start) is a robustovert behavior easy to quantify with a well understood neuronal basis. Here we analyzebehavioral responses of goldfish (Carassius auratus) to visual and auditory stimuli, shownindividually or combined, and quantify the escape probability. We show how sensory cuesthat 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 discusshow animals use available sources of information for optimal decision making.