Researchers describe how an approaching object triggers a flight reaction in the fish brain

Friday, June 26, 2015 - 06:00 in Biology & Nature

Humans and animals instinctively evade rapidly approaching objects. By doing so, they avoid collisions or escape attacking predators. For this to happen, the brain must calculate the direction and speed of a stimulus in the visual system and initiate an appropriate evasive reaction. How the brain achieves this is largely unclear. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now shown in zebrafish larvae what is interpreted as an approaching foe and which area of the brain recognizes an object as a threat and initiates a flight reaction.

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