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First published online September 5, 2008
Journal of Experimental Biology 211, 2919-2930 (2008)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2008
doi: 10.1242/jeb.016154
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Multisensory enhancement of electromotor responses to a single moving object

Scott R. Pluta* and Masashi Kawasaki

Department of Biology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA

* Author for correspondence (e-mail: srp3g{at}virginia.edu)

Accepted 4 July 2008

Weakly electric fish possess three cutaneous sensory organs structured in arrays with overlapping receptive fields. Theoretically, these tuberous electrosensory, ampullary electrosensory and mechanosensory lateral line receptors receive spatiotemporally congruent stimulation in the presence of a moving object. The current study is the first to quantify the magnitude of multisensory enhancement across these mechanosensory and electrosensory systems during moving-object recognition. We used the novelty response of a pulse-type weakly electric fish to quantitatively compare multisensory responses to their component unisensory responses. Principally, we discovered that multisensory novelty responses are significantly larger than their arithmetically summed component unisensory responses. Additionally, multimodal stimulation yielded a significant increase in novelty response amplitude, probability and the rate of a high-frequency burst, known as a `scallop'. Supralinear multisensory enhancement of the novelty response may signify an augmentation of perception driven by the ecological significance of multimodal stimuli. Scalloping may function as a sensory scan aimed at rapidly facilitating the electrolocation of novel stimuli.

Key words: electrosensory, fish, integration, mechanosensory, motion sensing, multimodal, niger, novelty response, object recognition, supralinear


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© The Company of Biologists Ltd 2008