OPTOGENETICS EFFECT ON UNDERSTANDING THE MAMMALIAN BAT BRAIN: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MIDBRAIN SUPERIOR COLLICULUS, INFERIOR COLLECULUS, AND THE AUDITORY CORTEX

Abstract

The natural environment is a noisy, complex sensory space. As a result, an animal can benefit from reacting to its immediate surroundings while simultaneously planning future behaviors. This is especially true for goal-directed behaviors, such as spatial navigation and hunting. Regulating these behaviors is a complex task that is not yet understood because of the prevailing difficulty in measuring how an animal controls its behavior with respect to environmental stimuli. The echolocating bat is a powerful model for these studies because the way it senses the world – sonar vocalizations – can be explicitly measured and related to ongoing and planned sensorimotor control. The circuitry involved in these vocalizations includes both top-down and bottom-up processing components that can work in conjunction to direct the bat toward its target in both azimuth and elevation at each moment in time and in planning for the future. Through the process of optogenetics, this affiliation between brain structures regarding processing components can be better understood by activating and inhibiting neurons with light. This allows for the control of activity in the brain with precision in time. This research and experimentation will allow for the discovery of the link between specific neurons and the behaviors they elicit in relation to the orientation and execution of a motor response in the mammalian bat brain.