Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 111, Issue 13, Pages 5006-5011Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1323297111
Keywords
invertebrate; vision; electrophysiology; local field potential
Categories
Funding
- Australian Research Council [DP1092442]
- Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT100100725]
- Queensland Brain Institute
- Australian Research Council [DP1092442] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
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Attention allows animals to respond selectively to competing stimuli, enabling some stimuli to evoke a behavioral response while others are ignored. How the brain does this remains mysterious, although it is increasingly evident that even animals with the smallest brains display this capacity. For example, insects respond selectively to salient visual stimuli, but it is unknown where such selectivity occurs in the insect brain, or whether neural correlates of attention might predict the visual choices made by an insect. Here, we investigate neural correlates of visual attention in behaving honeybees (Apis mellifera). Using a closed-loop paradigm that allows tethered, walking bees to actively control visual objects in a virtual reality arena, we show that behavioral fixation increases neuronal responses to flickering, frequency-tagged stimuli. Attention-like effects were reduced in the optic lobes during replay of the same visual sequences, when bees were not able to control the visual displays. When bees were presented with competing frequency-tagged visual stimuli, selectivity in the medulla (an optic ganglion) preceded behavioral selection of a stimulus, suggesting that modulation of early visual processing centers precedes eventual behavioral choices made by these insects.
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