scholarly journals The interaction of path integration and terrestrial visual cues in navigating desert ants: what can we learn from path characteristics?

2017 ◽  
Vol 221 (1) ◽  
pp. jeb167304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Buehlmann ◽  
A. Sofia D. Fernandes ◽  
Paul Graham
Keyword(s):  
Path Integration ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Desert Ants

scholarly journals Path Integration Provides a Scaffold for Landmark Learning in Desert Ants

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (15) ◽  
pp. 1368-1371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Müller ◽  
Rüdiger Wehner
Keyword(s):  
Path Integration ◽  
Desert Ants ◽  
Landmark Learning

scholarly journals A desert ant's memory of recent visual experience and the control of route guidance

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1787) ◽  
pp. 20140634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Collett
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Control Element ◽  
Route Guidance ◽  
General Role ◽  
Simple Route ◽  
Guidance Cues ◽  
Desert Ants ◽  
Series Of Experiments

Insects such as desert ants learn stereotyped visual routes between their nests and reliable food sites. Studies here reveal an important control element for ensuring that the route memories are used appropriately. They find that visual route memories can be disengaged, so that they do not provide guidance, even when all appropriate visual cues are present and when there are no competing guidance cues. Ants were trained along a simple route dominated by a single isolated landmark. If returning ants were caught just before entering the nest and replaced at the feeder, then they often interrupted the recapitulation of their homeward route with a period of apparent confusion during which the route memories were ignored. A series of experiments showed that this confusion occurred in response to the repetition of the route, and that the ants must therefore maintain some kind of a memory of their visual experience on the current trip home. A conceptual model of route guidance is offered to explain the results here. It proposes how the memory might act and suggests a general role for disengagement in regulating route guidance.

scholarly journals Optimal multiguidance integration in insect navigation

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (11) ◽  
pp. 2824-2829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thierry Hoinville ◽  
Rüdiger Wehner
Keyword(s):  
Path Integration ◽  
Cognitive Map ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Terrestrial Environment ◽  
Insect Navigation ◽  
Desert Ants ◽  
Local Vector ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Global Vector ◽  
Global And Local

In the last decades, desert ants have become model organisms for the study of insect navigation. In finding their way, they use two major navigational routines: path integration using a celestial compass and landmark guidance based on sets of panoramic views of the terrestrial environment. It has been claimed that this information would enable the insect to acquire and use a centralized cognitive map of its foraging terrain. Here, we present a decentralized architecture, in which the concurrently operating path integration and landmark guidance routines contribute optimally to the directions to be steered, with “optimal” meaning maximizing the certainty (reliability) of the combined information. At any one time during its journey, the animal computes a path integration (global) vector and landmark guidance (local) vector, in which the length of each vector is proportional to the certainty of the individual estimates. Hence, these vectors represent the limited knowledge that the navigator has at any one place about the direction of the goal. The sum of the global and local vectors indicates the navigator’s optimal directional estimate. Wherever applied, this decentralized model architecture is sufficient to simulate the results of quite a number of diverse cue-conflict experiments, which have recently been performed in various behavioral contexts by different authors in both desert ants and honeybees. They include even those experiments that have deliberately been designed by former authors to strengthen the evidence for a metric cognitive map in bees.

scholarly journals Both visual and idiothetic cues contribute to head direction cell stability during navigation along complex routes

2011 ◽  
Vol 105 (6) ◽  
pp. 2989-3001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan M. Yoder ◽  
Benjamin J. Clark ◽  
Joel E. Brown ◽  
Mignon V. Lamia ◽  
Stephane Valerio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Path Integration ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Cell Activity ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Head Direction ◽  
Motion Cues ◽  
Cell Stability ◽  
Self Motion ◽  
The Relationship

Successful navigation requires a constantly updated neural representation of directional heading, which is conveyed by head direction (HD) cells. The HD signal is predominantly controlled by visual landmarks, but when familiar landmarks are unavailable, self-motion cues are able to control the HD signal via path integration. Previous studies of the relationship between HD cell activity and path integration have been limited to two or more arenas located in the same room, a drawback for interpretation because the same visual cues may have been perceptible across arenas. To address this issue, we tested the relationship between HD cell activity and path integration by recording HD cells while rats navigated within a 14-unit T-maze and in a multiroom maze that consisted of unique arenas that were located in different rooms but connected by a passageway. In the 14-unit T-maze, the HD signal remained relatively stable between the start and goal boxes, with the preferred firing directions usually shifting <45° during maze traversal. In the multiroom maze in light, the preferred firing directions also remained relatively constant between rooms, but with greater variability than in the 14-unit maze. In darkness, HD cell preferred firing directions showed marginally more variability between rooms than in the lighted condition. Overall, the results indicate that self-motion cues are capable of maintaining the HD cell signal in the absence of familiar visual cues, although there are limits to its accuracy. In addition, visual information, even when unfamiliar, can increase the precision of directional perception.

scholarly journals The Use of Landmarks by Clark's Nutcrackers: First Tests of a New Model

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan C. Kamil ◽  
Aleida J. Goodyear ◽  
Ken Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Path Integration ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Olfactory Cues ◽  
Nucifraga Columbiana ◽  
Scatter Hoarding ◽  
New Model ◽  
Desert Ants ◽  
Clark’S Nutcrackers ◽  
Multiple Bearings ◽  
Clark's Nutcrackers

Animals use many different mechanisms to navigate in space. The characteristics of the mechanism employed are usually well-suited to the demands of each particular navigational problem. For example, desert ants navigating in a relatively featureless environment use path integration, birds homing or migrating over long distances use compasses of various sorts, salmon returning to their natal stream home on olfactory cues. The study of navigation requires the study of many different taxa confronting different problems. One interesting case involves scatter-hoarding species that use memory to relocate their hidden food. Such animals face the problem of remembering many locations simultaneously. Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) are an excellent example, and this paper considers their possible use of multiple bearings from landmarks.

scholarly journals Navigational path integration by cortical neurons: origins in higher-order direction selectivity

2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1896-1906 ◽  
Author(s):  
William K. Page ◽  
Nobuya Sato ◽  
Michael T. Froehler ◽  
William Vaughn ◽  
Charles J. Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Path Integration ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Direction Selectivity ◽  
Circular Path ◽  
Sensory Cues ◽  
Relative Prevalence

Navigation relies on the neural processing of sensory cues about observer self-movement and spatial location. Neurons in macaque dorsal medial superior temporal cortex (MSTd) respond to visual and vestibular self-movement cues, potentially contributing to navigation and orientation. We moved monkeys on circular paths around a room while recording the activity of MSTd neurons. MSTd neurons show a variety of sensitivities to the monkey's heading direction, circular path through the room, and place in the room. Changing visual cues alters the relative prevalence of those response properties. Disrupting the continuity of self-movement paths through the environment disrupts path selectivity in a manner linked to the time course of single neuron responses. We hypothesize that sensory cues interact with the spatial and temporal integrative properties of MSTd neurons to derive path selectivity for navigational path integration supporting spatial orientation.

scholarly journals Path Integration Controls Nest-Plume Following in Desert Ants

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 645-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Buehlmann ◽  
Bill S. Hansson ◽  
Markus Knaden
Keyword(s):  
Path Integration ◽  
Desert Ants
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