Abstract
In this paper we present experiments, involving sequential micro-stimulation of two (or more) adjacent neuro-ommatidia in the compound eye of the blowfly, Calliphora erythrocephala (Meig.). Experiments, using brief flashes of 3 ms duration with low intensities in the order of 2.4 · 10−2 Cd/m2, were performed to isolate the individual response contributions of single Elementary Movement Detectors (EMD’s) in the input micro-circuitry of the motion-sensitive directionally-selective H1 neuron. A two-dimensional mapping of single EMD contributions to the overall response will be presented for the dark-adapted eye. It is concluded that under such low illumination levels (when compared to normal daylight situations, where illumination typically varies between 1 and 200 Cd/m2), contributions from EMD’s with sampling bases up to 8 Δφh, oriented along the horizontal sensitivity axis of the neuron, contribute most to the response of the neuron.
Supplementary experiments indicate that, when in addition to an ongoing sequence in (for instance) the null direction, thus inhibiting the activity of the neuron, a second sequence is presented somewhere in the receptive field of the H1 neuron, the total response is a non-linear combination of both individual responses. Interpretation in terms of a pooling correlation scheme, which, over a limited target region, sums the activities of the EMD’s in a highly non-linear fashion, seems to provide a qualitative explanation.
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Bult, R., Schuling, F.H., Mastebroek, H.A.K. (1989). Response Behaviour of Elementary Movement Detectors in the Visual System of the Blowfly. In: Singh, R.N., Strausfeld, N.J. (eds) Neurobiology of Sensory Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2519-0_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2519-0_9
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