ePoster

Multisensory stimulation improves target tracking in zebrafish during rheotaxis

Sevval Izel Solmaz, Ismail Uyanik
FENS Forum 2024(2024)
Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Conference

FENS Forum 2024

Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Sevval Izel Solmaz, Ismail Uyanik

Abstract

The salience of multisensory information plays a key role in the behavioral performance of animals. Specifically, Danio rerio (zebrafish) utilizes sensory feedback from multiple modalities to regulate their target tracking behavior during rheotaxis. We have previously shown that zebrafish tracks the trajectories of a D-shaped tube that obscure the flow during their innate rheotaxis. We investigate the impact of the quality of multisensory information on the target tracking performance of zebrafish within a custom-built swim tunnel. To achieve this, we use a transparent D-shaped tube to obscure the flow and generate mechanosensory cues for the fish. Within this tube, we placed a thinner red stick to also generate simultaneous visual cues. Movements of this nested tube structure provides mechanosensory and visual cues for the fish to conduct target tracking. We manipulated the salience of the multisensory information by (1) changing the illumination between light and dark, (2) by keeping or removing the outer transparent D-shaped tube, and (3) by changing the diameter of the inner red stick. We experimented with N=5 zebrafish under each sensory salience condition by oscillating the tube using constant-frequency sinusoidal signals at different frequencies. We calculated the tracking performance of the fish and estimated the frequency response of the fish to the sinusoidal tube movements. Our study reveals the multisensory nature of the target tracking behavior of zebrafish during rheotaxis. Statistical analysis show that target tracking performance is significantly improved as the quality of the multisensory information is enhanced. This work is supported by TUBITAK (120E054).

Unique ID: fens-24/multisensory-stimulation-improves-target-d1f3743d