[Summer’16 Internship] Neuroscience of Grasshopper Jumps: Classic experiments: DCMD response to approaching balls

With the ideal ITI determined, I can move on to the set of core experiments: testing to see how the DCMD neuron behaves when simulated black balls of different sizes and velocities approach the grasshopper’s exposed eye. So my little friends spend about 2 hours on top of the SpikerBox for these experiments.

I continue to process the data in MatLab for better visualization. Here are the results for balls approaching from a constant initial distant of 10cm, 6cm in size, and with various velocities (-2, -4, -6, -8m/s).

Perievent histogram: showing DCMD firing frequency 2s before and 2s after the simulated collision between the eye and the object:

Raster plot: showing DCMD spiking pattern across each pair of S and v over time. DCMD firing peaks around collision for objects approaching at -2m/s, and after collision for objects approaching faster:

By Dieu My Nguyen