Publikationsdatum:
2011-07-30
Beschreibung:
When echolocating big brown bats fly in complex surroundings, echoes arriving from irrelevant objects (clutter) located to the sides of their sonar beam can mask perception of relevant objects located to the front (targets), causing "blind spots." Because the second harmonic is beamed more weakly to the sides than the first harmonic, these clutter echoes have a weaker second harmonic. In psychophysical experiments, we found that electronically misaligning first and second harmonics in echoes (to mimic the misalignment of corresponding neural responses to harmonics in clutter echoes) disrupts the bat's echo-delay perception but also prevents clutter masking. Electronically offsetting harmonics to realign their neural responses restores delay perception but also clutter interference. Thus, bats exploit harmonics to distinguish clutter echoes from target echoes, sacrificing delay acuity to suppress masking.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Bates, Mary E -- Simmons, James A -- Zorikov, Tengiz V -- R01-MH069633/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2011 Jul 29;333(6042):627-30. doi: 10.1126/science.1202065.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Box 1853, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. maryebates@gmail.com〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21798949" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Schlagwort(e):
Animals
;
Chiroptera/*physiology
;
*Echolocation
;
Feeding Behavior
;
Female
;
Insects
;
Male
;
Perceptual Masking
;
Reaction Time
;
Sound
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Digitale ISSN:
1095-9203
Thema:
Biologie
,
Chemie und Pharmazie
,
Informatik
,
Medizin
,
Allgemeine Naturwissenschaft
,
Physik
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