Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Stürzl, W
• Kempter, R
• van Hemmen, J L

Titel

Theory of arachnid prey localization

Ist Teil von

• Physical review letters, 2000-06, Vol.84 (24), p.5668-5671

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

2000

Quelle

American Physical Society Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Sand scorpions and many other arachnids locate their prey through highly sensitive slit sensilla at the tips (tarsi) of their eight legs. This sensor array responds to vibrations with stimulus-locked action potentials encoding the target direction. We present a neuronal model to account for stimulus angle determination using a population of second-order neurons, each receiving excitatory input from one tarsus and inhibition from a triad opposite to it. The input opens a time window whose width determines a neuron's firing probability. Stochastic optimization is realized through tuning the balance between excitation and inhibition. The agreement with experiments on the sand scorpion is excellent.