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The main focus of our research is to understand the computational mechanisms that allow the nervous system to extract behaviourally relevant information from the retinal input and to use this information in behavioural control. Our approach is distinguished by its emphasis on studying processing of behaviourally relevant visual information in animals that are situated in and interact with their environment. Therefore, behavioural systems analysis of flies (blowflies and hoverflies) and honeybees is one focus of our research.
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Behavioural analysis currently concentrates on the following issues:
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Course control (stabilisation of the flight course against disturbances and avoidance of collisions with obstacles)
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Pursuit of moving targets
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Active flight and gaze strategies
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Coordination of head and body movements
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Discrimination of objects from their background
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Spatial learning and local navigation
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Because visual systems evolved in specific functional contexts, the significance of information being computed by the brain can only be assessed by analysing the underlying mechanisms under natural stimulus conditions. However, the representation of visual information is usually analysed by using stimuli that are much simpler than the stimuli animals encounter when moving freely in their habitat. The differences in the stimuli pertain to both their structural properties which are mainly set by the properties of the outside world as well as to their dynamics which are, at least in actively moving animals, determined to a large extent by the animal's own actions and reactions. Therefore, it is our mission to complement system analysis of the computations of neuronal populations with stimuli defined by the experimenter by analyses under the system’s normal operating conditions, i.e. for visual stimuli that are encountered during natural behaviour. |
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Analysis at the neuronal level currently concentrates of the following issues:
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Neural computation in the natural operating range |
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Behaviourally relevant neural codes and reliability of neural coding
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| Population coding of behaviourally relevant information |
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Adaptation of neural computations to the behavioural context |
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Neuronal control of action selection and concatenation of behavioural elements |
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Performance of neuronal mechanisms extracting natural visual information under closed-loop conditions
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Universität | 
International | 
Benutzer | 
