Motor Behavior Selectively Inhibits Hair Cells Activated by Forward Motion in the Lateral Line of Zebrafish.

ABSTRACT: How do sensory systems disambiguate events in the external world from signals generated by the animal's own motor actions? One strategy is to use an "efference copy" of the motor command to inhibit the sensory input caused by active behavior [1]. But does inhibition of self-generated inputs also block transmission of external stimuli? We investigated this question in the lateral line, a sensory system that allows fish and amphibians to detect water currents and that contributes to behaviors such as rheotaxis [2] and predator avoidance [3, 4]. This mechanical sense begins in hair cells grouped into neuromasts dotted along the animal's body [5]. Each neuromast contains two populations of hair cells, activated by deflection in either the anterior or posterior direction [6], as well as efferen

SUBMITTER: Pichler P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6947483 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature