Dr. Anton Nikolaev, University of Sheffield, UK
Dr. Anton Nikolaev, Lecturer at the School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, will present: "Plasticity in the zebrafish sensory systems"
Main content
The brain has to perform complex computation while being exposed to a large number of sensory stimuli that signal the presence of food, danger, conspecifics and neutral (irrelevant) objects. Upon receiving information from different sensory modalities, the brain has to ignore neutral objects, and execute specific behavioural programs to stimuli that are relevant to animal’s survival and/or reproduction. When dealing with a large number of diverse stimuli, sensory neurons adjust their response amplitude depending on recent stimulus history. This can be expressed in two different forms: adaptation, a change of response amplitude to repetitive presentations of the same stimulus; and cross-stimulus modulation, a change of response amplitude to the same stimulus in the presence of another stimulus. In my talk I will describe adaptation and cross-stimulus modulation in the zebrafish visual and olfactory system and discuss the importance of different forms of adaptation for the sensory neurons.
