Neuroethology - Biology 419/580 |
Bowling Green State University, Spring 2004 |
Hungry toads orient towards small moving objects within their visual field. Very specific aspects of a visual stimulus are sufficient to bring about a complex series of behaviors resulting in capture of the prey item. These data have been largely interpreted within the context of concepts advanced by classical ethology:
The key element in the workings of a releasing mechanism is a dedicated feature detector where a subset of neurons is tuned to a specific configuration of stimuli representing an object's features.
Scientists