Influencia de las propiedades dendríticas para la integración multimodal de una decisión ultra rápidaion in the goldfish

MEDAN, VIOLETA

Huerta Grande, Córdoba

Congreso; XXVII Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias; 2012

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Animals integrate information from different sensory modalities to form percepts that allows adaptive behavioral decisions. Great advances have been made by studying sense organs one at-the-time. However, understanding of multimodal integration and its role in decision-making has lagged behind. Our goal is to extend our knowledge about the contribution of single neurons in multimodal integration. Specifically, we try to understand basic but essential phenomena as how neurons process multimodal sensory input with variable temporal dynamics and if dendrites show specific adaptations according to their input sensory modality. These questions are typically studied in vitro or in silico. We use however, an in vivo model system, the Mauthner cell (M-cell) circuit, responsible of triggering the escape response of the goldfish (Carassius auratus) combined with biologically relevant stimuli. Interestingly, the M-cell receives anatomically segregated visual and auditory inputs. We found that the M-cell integrates visual and auditory stimuli of remarkably different temporal characteristics (abrupt auditory pips and visual looms) in a nonlinear fashion. Moreover, the differences in the electrical and morphological properties of its dendrites influence this nonlinear integration.