Venue : Centre Broca Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Neural circuits for navigation in insects
Barbara Webb
Professor of Biorobotics
Institute for Perception, Action and Behaviour
School of Informatics
University of Edinburgh
http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/insectrobotics/
Invited by Bordeaux Neurocampus and NBA
Abstract
Insect navigation has been a focus of behavioural study for many years, but the neural mechanisms are largely unknown. We have used computational modelling to bridge this gap, by relating the computational requirements of navigational tasks to the type of computation offered by invertebrate brain circuits. We have shown that visual memory of passing views could be
acquired by associative learning in the mushroom body neuropil, and allow insects to recapitulate long routes. We have also proposed a circuit in the central complex neuropil that integrates sky compass and optic flow information on an outbound path and can thus steer the animal directly home. The models are strongly constrained by neuroanatomy, and are tested in realistic agent and robot simulations.
Selected publications
Stone, Thomas, et al. « An anatomically constrained model for path integration in the bee brain. » Current Biology 27.20 (2017): 3069-3085.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982217310904
Le Moël, Florent, et al. « The central complex as a potential substrate for vector based navigation. » Frontiers in psychology 10 (2019): 690.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00690/full
Ardin, Paul, et al. « Using an insect mushroom body circuit to encode route memory in complex natural environments. » PLoS computational biology 12.2 (2016): e1004683.
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004683