For the first time, neural recordings reveal how flying bats comprehend 3-D space
Date:October 22, 2015
Source:National Science Foundation
Recordings from echolocating bat brains have for the first time given researchers a view into how mammals understand 3-D space.
By training bats to fly around obstacles in a room, and sit patiently on a platform, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research team were able to interpret how the animals use echolocation -- a high-frequency sound navigation system that bats use to hunt -- to sense their environment. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
The researchers focused on a particular portion of the bat brain, the mid-brain superior colliculus. All mammal brains have a superior colliculus, and it plays a role in "orienting behavior," or how species move through space. In humans, that means using visual cues. For bats, it means acoustic ones, or echolocation.
Bats direct their sound beam to inspect objects in their environment, just as primates move their eyes to see their environment, said Cynthia Moss of Johns Hopkins University. She researches spatial perception, memory, motor behaviors and more. Her Batlab conducted the research.
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