Zoology II, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
Institute of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
Front Neural Circuits. 2022 May 18;16:899370. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2022.899370. eCollection 2022.
Echolocation behavior, a navigation strategy based on acoustic signals, allows scientists to explore neural processing of behaviorally relevant stimuli. For the purpose of orientation, bats broadcast echolocation calls and extract spatial information from the echoes. Because bats control call emission and thus the availability of spatial information, the behavioral relevance of these signals is undiscussable. While most neurophysiological studies, conducted in the past, used synthesized acoustic stimuli that mimic portions of the echolocation signals, recent progress has been made to understand how naturalistic echolocation signals are encoded in the bat brain. Here, we review how does stimulus history affect neural processing, how spatial information from multiple objects and how echolocation signals embedded in a naturalistic, noisy environment are processed in the bat brain. We end our review by discussing the huge potential that state-of-the-art recording techniques provide to gain a more complete picture on the neuroethology of echolocation behavior.
回声定位行为是一种基于声信号的导航策略，它使科学家能够探索与行为相关刺激的神经处理过程。蝙蝠通过发出回声定位叫声并从回声中提取空间信息来实现定向。由于蝙蝠可以控制叫声的发射，从而控制空间信息的可用性，因此这些信号的行为相关性是毋庸置疑的。虽然过去的大多数神经生理学研究都使用了模拟回声定位信号部分的合成声刺激，但最近的进展已经使得人们能够理解自然的回声定位信号是如何在蝙蝠大脑中进行编码的。在这里，我们回顾了刺激历史如何影响神经处理过程，来自多个物体的空间信息以及在自然、嘈杂的环境中嵌入的回声定位信号是如何在蝙蝠大脑中被处理的。最后，我们讨论了最先进的记录技术提供的巨大潜力，这些技术可以帮助我们更全面地了解回声定位行为的神经生态学。
