Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, 8410501, Israel.
Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, 8410501, Israel.
J Exp Biol. 2022 Feb 1;225(3). doi: 10.1242/jeb.243237. Epub 2022 Feb 10.
Recognition of individual objects and their categorization is a complex computational task. Nevertheless, visual systems can perform this task in a rapid and accurate manner. Humans and other animals can efficiently recognize objects despite countless variations in their projection on the retina due to different viewing angles, distance, illumination conditions and other parameters. To gain a better understanding of the recognition process in teleosts, we explored it in archerfish, a species that hunts by shooting a jet of water at aerial targets and thus can benefit from ecologically relevant recognition of natural objects. We found that archerfish not only can categorize objects into relevant classes but also can do so for novel objects, and additionally they can recognize an individual object presented under different conditions. To understand the mechanisms underlying this capability, we developed a computational model based on object features and a machine learning classifier. The analysis of the model revealed that a small number of features was sufficient for categorization, and the fish were more sensitive to object contours than textures. We tested these predictions in additional behavioral experiments and validated them. Our findings suggest the existence of a complex visual process in the archerfish visual system that enables object recognition and categorization.
识别单个物体及其分类是一项复杂的计算任务。然而，视觉系统可以快速、准确地完成这项任务。人类和其他动物可以有效地识别物体，尽管由于视角、距离、光照条件和其他参数的不同，它们在视网膜上的投影会有无数的变化。为了更好地理解硬骨鱼类的识别过程，我们在射水鱼中进行了探索，射水鱼通过向空中目标喷射水流来捕猎，因此可以从生态相关的自然物体识别中受益。我们发现，射水鱼不仅可以将物体归类为相关的类别，还可以对新物体进行归类，此外，它们还可以识别在不同条件下呈现的单个物体。为了了解这种能力的机制，我们基于物体特征和机器学习分类器开发了一个计算模型。该模型的分析表明，少量特征就足以进行分类，而且鱼对物体轮廓比对纹理更敏感。我们在额外的行为实验中测试了这些预测，并验证了它们。我们的研究结果表明，射水鱼的视觉系统中存在一种复杂的视觉过程，使它能够识别和分类物体。
