The neural basis of insect pattern vision

• Applicant: Dr. Anna Stöckl
• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology ; Sensory and Behavioural Biology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 470081111

Vision is one of our major access ports to the physical world. Because of its central importance to human and animal behaviour, understanding how neural processing gives rise to the visual percept is one of the key questions in neuroscience research. To extract meaning from the text in this application, you are currently using a central feature of your visual system: pattern vision. With essential functions in communication, object recognition, and orientation, it constitutes a fundamental pillar of animal vision. In its most generalised form it provides a size-, position- and orientation-invariant representation of a pattern. Given that our brain dedicates several hundred million neurons to this task, it is all the more astonishing that insects, with brains smaller than a grain of rice, recognise and memorise visual patterns as well. Some insect pollinators even possess the ability to generalise pattern features. They thus provide a model to study the neural implementation of invariant pattern recognition with limited computational resources. While insect pattern discrimination behaviour has been studied extensively, very little is known about its neuronal implementation. I plan to close this gap, using a hawkmoth as a tractable model to dissect the invariant pattern vision circuits of insects from photons to behaviour.The hummingbird hawkmoth (Macroglossum stellatarum) combines a physiologically accessible nervous system and a biologically relevant behavioural paradigm with which to study invariant pattern recognition. I plan to dissect the neural mechanisms underlying this behaviour with multiple methods: (1) a quantitative behavioural assessment will determine the parameter space for hawkmoth pattern vision, and (2) intracellular recordings will provide the first characterisation of pattern-responsive neurons in the insect brain. To bridge from behaviour to physiology, (3) tetrode recordings in hawkmoths that actively scan patterns in virtual reality will reveal how patterns are encoded in behaving insects and how active vision contributes to pattern encoding. (4) A computational model will enable mechanistic insights into the pattern vision network, beyond those possible in vivo, and its aerial robot implementation will reveal optimal strategies for active vision.The outcomes of this research programme will be highly instructive for visual neuroscience. The neural mechanisms described in hawkmoths will lay the basis for comparative investigations across insect species. Comparing the pattern processing strategies of hawkmoths to that in vertebrates will reveal converging neural strategies, as well as diverging solutions that insects use to cope with their distinctly lower processing power. The robotic implementation of our computational model will provide a unique application of pattern recognition. Together, this project will deliver key contributions to the fields of animal vision, neuroscience, insect sensory ecology, and robotics.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups