Neuron unites 2 theoretical models on motion detection
Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - 17:21
in Biology & Nature
The fly brain recognizes and processes movements very quickly and accurately. As indicated by their name, photoreceptor cells in the eye respond to light: is an image point bright or dark? They do not indicate the direction of a movement. This perception only arises in the brain through the comparative computations of light signals coming from adjacent image points. Engineers, physicists and neurobiologists have been debating the exact nature of these computations for around 50 years. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have now combined two theories about these computations, which were previously considered to be alternative hypotheses - and discovered that they are carried out in a single neuron.