Way-marking behaviour: an aid to spatial navigation in the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

Stopka, Pavel; Macdonald, David W.

doi:10.1186/1472-6785-3-3

Cited by 25 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Making decisions based on noisy or ambiguous sensory evidence is a task animals must face on a daily basis. Take, for instance, a mouse in the wild, whose navigation behavior relies on vision (Alyan and Jander, 1994 ; Etienne et al, 1996 ; Stopka and Macdonald, 2003 ). Amidst tall grass, deciding a route to a partially occluded food source (say, a corn plant) might require gradual accumulation of visual evidence, i.e., short glimpses of what may or may not be part of that plant.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Accumulation-of-Evidence Task Using Visual Pulses for Mice Navigating in Virtual Reality

Pinto

Koay

Engelhard

et al. 2018

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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The gradual accumulation of sensory evidence is a crucial component of perceptual decision making, but its neural mechanisms are still poorly understood. Given the wide availability of genetic and optical tools for mice, they can be useful model organisms for the study of these phenomena; however, behavioral tools are largely lacking. Here, we describe a new evidence-accumulation task for head-fixed mice navigating in a virtual reality (VR) environment. As they navigate down the stem of a virtual T-maze, they see brief pulses of visual evidence on either side, and retrieve a reward on the arm with the highest number of pulses. The pulses occur randomly with Poisson statistics, yielding a diverse yet well-controlled stimulus set, making the data conducive to a variety of computational approaches. A large number of mice of different genotypes were able to learn and consistently perform the task, at levels similar to rats in analogous tasks. They are sensitive to side differences of a single pulse, and their memory of the cues is stable over time. Moreover, using non-parametric as well as modeling approaches, we show that the mice indeed accumulate evidence: they use multiple pulses of evidence from throughout the cue region of the maze to make their decision, albeit with a small overweighting of earlier cues, and their performance is affected by the magnitude but not the duration of evidence. Additionally, analysis of the mice's running patterns revealed that trajectories are fairly stereotyped yet modulated by the amount of sensory evidence, suggesting that the navigational component of this task may provide a continuous readout correlated to the underlying cognitive variables. Our task, which can be readily integrated with state-of-the-art techniques, is thus a valuable tool to study the circuit mechanisms and dynamics underlying perceptual decision making, particularly under more complex behavioral contexts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Accumulation-of-Evidence Task Using Visual Pulses for Mice Navigating in Virtual Reality

Pinto

Koay

Engelhard

et al. 2018

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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“…Wood mice have become a key model species in ecology and evolutionary biology due to their abundance, ease of capture, and ability to be maintained in captivity. For example, they are frequently used in studies of parasite and microbiome ecology ( Knowles et al , 2013 ; Marsh et al , 2022 ; Raulo et al , 2021 ; Sweeny et al , 2021 ), eco-immunology ( Babayan et al , 2018 ; Clerc et al , 2019 ), sexual selection ( Moore et al , 2002 ) and behavioural ecology ( Stopka & Macdonald, 2003 ). They are also of interest as relatively anthropophilic reservoirs of zoonotic pathogens ( Borg et al , 2017 ; Crouch et al , 1995 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genome sequence of the wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Knowles,

Raulo

2023

Wellcome Open Res

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“…In areas such as ecology, psychology and geography, the term "Waymarking" is used to define the action of posting signs, or waymarks, along a route so that travellers can easily follow the route [21]. These marks serve as points of reference during exploration and navigation for the environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Waymarking in Social Robots: Environment Signaling Using Human–Robot Interaction

Corrales-Paredes

Malfáz

Egido-García

et al. 2021

Sensors

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Travellers use the term waymarking to define the action of posting signs, or waymarks, along a route. These marks are intended to be points of reference during navigation for the environment. In this research, we will define waymarking as the skill of a robot to signal the environment or generate information to facilitate localization and navigation, both for its own use and for other robots as well. We present an automated environment signaling system using human–robot interaction and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The goal is for the robot, through human–robot interaction, to obtain information from the environment and use this information to carry out the signaling or waymarking process. HRI will play a key role in the signaling process since this type of communication makes it possible to exchange more specific and enriching information. The robot uses common phrases such as “Where am I?” and “Where can I go?”, just as we humans do when we ask other people for information about the environment. It is also possible to guide the robot and “show” it the environment to carry out the task of writing the signs. The robot will use the information received to create, update, or improve the navigation data in the RFID signals. In this paper, the signaling process will be described, how the robot acquires the information for signals, writing and updating process and finally, the implementation and integration in a real social robot in a real indoor environment.

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Way-marking behaviour: an aid to spatial navigation in the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

Cited by 25 publications

References 25 publications

An Accumulation-of-Evidence Task Using Visual Pulses for Mice Navigating in Virtual Reality

An Accumulation-of-Evidence Task Using Visual Pulses for Mice Navigating in Virtual Reality

The genome sequence of the wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Waymarking in Social Robots: Environment Signaling Using Human–Robot Interaction

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