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Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control

Cockroaches are scavengers that forage through dark, maze-like environments. Like other foraging animals, for instance rats, they must continually asses their situation to keep track of targets and negotiate barriers. While navigating a complex environment, all animals need to integrate sensory info...

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Autores principales: Varga, Adrienn G., Kathman, Nicholas D., Martin, Joshua P., Guo, Peiyuan, Ritzmann, Roy E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5258693/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28174527
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00004
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author Varga, Adrienn G.
Kathman, Nicholas D.
Martin, Joshua P.
Guo, Peiyuan
Ritzmann, Roy E.
author_facet Varga, Adrienn G.
Kathman, Nicholas D.
Martin, Joshua P.
Guo, Peiyuan
Ritzmann, Roy E.
author_sort Varga, Adrienn G.
collection PubMed
description Cockroaches are scavengers that forage through dark, maze-like environments. Like other foraging animals, for instance rats, they must continually asses their situation to keep track of targets and negotiate barriers. While navigating a complex environment, all animals need to integrate sensory information in order to produce appropriate motor commands. The integrated sensory cues can be used to provide the animal with an environmental and contextual reference frame for the behavior. To successfully reach a goal location, navigational cues continuously derived from sensory inputs have to be utilized in the spatial guidance of motor commands. The sensory processes, contextual and spatial mechanisms, and motor outputs contributing to navigation have been heavily studied in rats. In contrast, many insect studies focused on the sensory and/or motor components of navigation, and our knowledge of the abstract representation of environmental context and spatial information in the insect brain is relatively limited. Recent reports from several laboratories have explored the role of the central complex (CX), a sensorimotor region of the insect brain, in navigational processes by recording the activity of CX neurons in freely-moving insects and in more constrained, experimenter-controlled situations. The results of these studies indicate that the CX participates in processing the temporal and spatial components of sensory cues, and utilizes these cues in creating an internal representation of orientation and context, while also directing motor control. Although these studies led to a better understanding of the CX's role in insect navigation, there are still major voids in the literature regarding the underlying mechanisms and brain regions involved in spatial navigation. The main goal of this review is to place the above listed findings in the wider context of animal navigation by providing an overview of the neural mechanisms of navigation in rats and summarizing and comparing our current knowledge on the CX's role in insect navigation to these processes. By doing so, we aimed to highlight some of the missing puzzle pieces in insect navigation and provide a different perspective for future directions.
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spelling pubmed-52586932017-02-07 Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control Varga, Adrienn G. Kathman, Nicholas D. Martin, Joshua P. Guo, Peiyuan Ritzmann, Roy E. Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience Cockroaches are scavengers that forage through dark, maze-like environments. Like other foraging animals, for instance rats, they must continually asses their situation to keep track of targets and negotiate barriers. While navigating a complex environment, all animals need to integrate sensory information in order to produce appropriate motor commands. The integrated sensory cues can be used to provide the animal with an environmental and contextual reference frame for the behavior. To successfully reach a goal location, navigational cues continuously derived from sensory inputs have to be utilized in the spatial guidance of motor commands. The sensory processes, contextual and spatial mechanisms, and motor outputs contributing to navigation have been heavily studied in rats. In contrast, many insect studies focused on the sensory and/or motor components of navigation, and our knowledge of the abstract representation of environmental context and spatial information in the insect brain is relatively limited. Recent reports from several laboratories have explored the role of the central complex (CX), a sensorimotor region of the insect brain, in navigational processes by recording the activity of CX neurons in freely-moving insects and in more constrained, experimenter-controlled situations. The results of these studies indicate that the CX participates in processing the temporal and spatial components of sensory cues, and utilizes these cues in creating an internal representation of orientation and context, while also directing motor control. Although these studies led to a better understanding of the CX's role in insect navigation, there are still major voids in the literature regarding the underlying mechanisms and brain regions involved in spatial navigation. The main goal of this review is to place the above listed findings in the wider context of animal navigation by providing an overview of the neural mechanisms of navigation in rats and summarizing and comparing our current knowledge on the CX's role in insect navigation to these processes. By doing so, we aimed to highlight some of the missing puzzle pieces in insect navigation and provide a different perspective for future directions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-01-24 /pmc/articles/PMC5258693/ /pubmed/28174527 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00004 Text en Copyright © 2017 Varga, Kathman, Martin, Guo and Ritzmann. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Varga, Adrienn G.
Kathman, Nicholas D.
Martin, Joshua P.
Guo, Peiyuan
Ritzmann, Roy E.
Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control
title Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control
title_full Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control
title_fullStr Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control
title_full_unstemmed Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control
title_short Spatial Navigation and the Central Complex: Sensory Acquisition, Orientation, and Motor Control
title_sort spatial navigation and the central complex: sensory acquisition, orientation, and motor control
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5258693/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28174527
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00004
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