scholarly journals Target tracking behaviour of the praying mantis Sphrodromantis lineola (Linnaeus) is driven by looming-type motion-detectors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Claire Rind ◽  
Lisa Jones ◽  
Ghaith Tarawneh ◽  
Jenny F. M. Read

AbstractWe designed visual stimuli to characterise the motion-detectors that underlie target tracking behaviour in the mantis. The first was a small, moving, stripy, bug-like target, made by opening a moving, Gabor-filtered window onto an extended, moving, sinewave pattern. The mantis tracked this bug-like target, but the likelihood of tracking the bug depended only on the temporal frequency of its motion. In contrast, optomotor responses to the extended moving sinewave pattern alone depended on both spatial and temporal frequency of the pattern, as expected from classical, correlation-based motion-detectors. In another experiment, we used small moving objects that were made up of chequerboard patterns of randomly arranged dark squares, and found objects with smaller sized chequers were tracked relatively less. Response suppression like this, when the internal detail of an object increases, suggests the presence of lateral inhibition between inputs to the motion-detectors for target tracking. Finally, wide-field motion of a chequerboard background near the target, balanced so no optomotor responses were evoked, suppressed tracking proportionally both to the nearness of the background to the target and to the size its dark chequered squares. Backgrounds with smaller sized squares produced more suppression. This effect has been used as a demonstration of lateral inhibition in detectors for looming-motion and makes their response greatest to an expanding outer edge, an image produced by an approaching object. Our findings point to a new role for a looming-type motion-detector in mantis target tracking. We also discuss the suitability of several large lobula-complex neurons for this role.Summary StatementLateral inhibition shown by motion-detectors underlying target tracking by the praying mantis Sphrodromantis lineola (Linnaeus).

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin W.G. Clifford ◽  
Michael R. Ibbotson ◽  
Keith Langley

AbstractThere are marked similarities in the adaptation to motion observed in wide-field directional neurons found in the mammalian nucleus of the optic tract and cells in the insect lobula plate. However, while the form and time scale of adaptation is comparable in the two systems, there is a difference in the directional properties of the effect. A model based on the Reichardt detector is proposed to describe adaptation in mammals and insects, with only minor modifications required to account for the differences in directionality. Temporal-frequency response functions of the neurons and the model are shifted laterally and compressed by motion adaptation. The lateral shift enhances dynamic range and differential motion sensitivity. The compression is not caused by fatigue, but is an intrinsic property of the adaptive process resulting from interdependence of temporal-frequency tuning and gain in the temporal filters of the motion detectors.


1992 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 1654-1666 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. C. Rind ◽  
P. J. Simmons

1. The "descending contralateral movement detector" (DCMD) neuron in the locust has been challenged with a variety of moving stimuli, including scenes from a film (Star Wars), moving disks, and images generated by computer. The neuron responds well to any rapid movement. For a dark object moving along a straight path at a uniform velocity, the DCMD gives the strongest response when the object travels directly toward the eye, and the weakest when the object travels away from the eye. Instead of expressing selectivity for movements of small rather than large objects, the DCMD responds preferentially to approaching objects. 2. The neuron shows a clear selectivity for approach over recession for a variety of sizes and velocities of movement both of real objects and in simulated movements. When a disk that subtends > or = 5 degrees at the eye approaches the eye, there are two peaks in spike rate: one immediately after the start of movement; and a second that builds up during the approach. When a disk recedes from the eye, there is a single peak in response as the movement starts. There is a good correlation between spike rate and angular acceleration of the edges of the image over the eye. 3. When an object approaches from a distance sufficient for it to subtend less than one interommatidial angle at the start of its approach, there is a single peak in response. The DCMD tracks the approach, and, if the object moves at 1 m/s or faster, the spike rate increases throughout the duration of object movement. The size of the response depends on the speed of approach. 4. It is unlikely that the DCMD encodes the time to collision accurately, because the response depends on the size as well as the velocity of an approaching object. 5. Wide-field movements suppress the response to an approaching object. The suppression varies with the temporal frequency of the background pattern. 6. Over a wide range of contrasts of object against background, the DCMD gives a stronger response to approaching than to receding objects. For low contrasts, the selectivity is greater for objects that are darker than the background than for objects that are lighter.


1992 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 1667-1682 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Simmons ◽  
F. C. Rind

1. We examine the critical image cues that are used by the locust visual system for the descending contralateral motion detector (DCMD) neuron to distinguish approaching from receding objects. Images were controlled by computer and presented on an electrostatic monitor. 2. Changes in overall luminance elicited much smaller and briefer responses from the DCMD than objects that appeared to approach the eye. Although a decrease in overall luminance might boost the response to an approaching dark object, movement of edges of the image is more important. 3. When two pairs of lines, in a cross-hairs configuration, were moved apart and then together again, the DCMD showed no preference for divergence compared with convergence of edges. A directional response was obtained by either making the lines increase in extent during divergence and decrease in extent during convergence; or by continually increasing the velocity of line movement during divergence and decreasing velocity during convergence. 4. The DCMD consistently gave a larger response to growing than to shrinking solid rectangular images. An increase compared with a decrease in the extent of edge in an image is, therefore, an important cue for the directionality of the response. For single moving edges of fixed extent, the neuron gave the largest response to edges that subtended 15 degrees at the eye. 5. The DCMD was very sensitive to the amount by which an edge traveled between frames on the display screen, with the largest responses generated by 2.5 degrees of travel. This implies that the neurons in the optic lobe that drive this movement-detecting system have receptive fields of about the same extent as a single ommatidium. 6. For edges moving up to 250 degree/s, the excitation of the DCMD increases with velocity. The response to an edge moving at a constant velocity adapts rapidly, in a manner that depends on velocity. Movement over one part of the retina can adapt the subsequent response to movement over another part of the retina. 7. For the DCMD to track and continue to respond to the image of an approaching object, the edges of the image must continually increase in velocity. This is the second important stimulus cue. 8. Edges of opposite contrasts (light-dark compared with dark-light) are processed in separate pathways that inhibit each other. This would contribute to the reduction of responses to wide-field movements.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ting Chen ◽  
Andrea Pennisi ◽  
Zhi Li ◽  
Yanning Zhang ◽  
Hichem Sahli

Multi-Object Tracking (MOT) in airborne videos is a challenging problem due to the uncertain airborne vehicle motion, vibrations of the mounted camera, unreliable detections, changes of size, appearance and motion of the moving objects and occlusions caused by the interaction between moving and static objects in the scene. To deal with these problems, this work proposes a four-stage hierarchical association framework for multiple object tracking in airborne video. The proposed framework combines Data Association-based Tracking (DAT) methods and target tracking using a compressive tracking approach, to robustly track objects in complex airborne surveillance scenes. In each association stage, different sets of tracklets and detections are associated to efficiently handle local tracklet generation, local trajectory construction, global drifting tracklet correction and global fragmented tracklet linking. Experiments with challenging airborne videos show significant tracking improvement compared to existing state-of-the-art methods.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (11) ◽  
pp. 1110002
Author(s):  
张帅 ZHANG Shuai ◽  
刘秉琦 LIU Bing-qi ◽  
黄富瑜 HUANG Fu-yu ◽  
余皓 YU Hao ◽  
陈一超 CHEN Yi-chao ◽  
...  

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 5724-5729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole G. Prévost ◽  
André Desbiens ◽  
Eric Gagnon ◽  
Daniel Hodouin

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1858) ◽  
pp. 20170673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Senna ◽  
Cesare V. Parise ◽  
Marc O. Ernst

Unlike vision, the mechanisms underlying auditory motion perception are poorly understood. Here we describe an auditory motion illusion revealing a novel cue to auditory speed perception: the temporal frequency of amplitude modulation (AM-frequency), typical for rattling sounds. Naturally, corrugated objects sliding across each other generate rattling sounds whose AM-frequency tends to directly correlate with speed. We found that AM-frequency modulates auditory speed perception in a highly systematic fashion: moving sounds with higher AM-frequency are perceived as moving faster than sounds with lower AM-frequency. Even more interestingly, sounds with higher AM-frequency also induce stronger motion aftereffects. This reveals the existence of specialized neural mechanisms for auditory motion perception, which are sensitive to AM-frequency. Thus, in spatial hearing, the brain successfully capitalizes on the AM-frequency of rattling sounds to estimate the speed of moving objects. This tightly parallels previous findings in motion vision, where spatio-temporal frequency of moving displays systematically affects both speed perception and the magnitude of the motion aftereffects. Such an analogy with vision suggests that motion detection may rely on canonical computations, with similar neural mechanisms shared across the different modalities.


2014 ◽  
Vol 945-949 ◽  
pp. 1869-1874
Author(s):  
Dong Mei Li ◽  
Tao Li

For multiple objects tracking in complex scenes, this paper proposes a new tracking algorithm for multiple moving objects. The algorithm makes likelihood calculation by using new DG_CENTRIST feature and color feature, and then calculates the overlapping ratio of the tracking object and the object in the current frame using coincidence degree to measure the occlusion. The algorithm has good robustness and stability, and the experiment results show that this method can effectively improve the accuracy of the multiple target tracking.


1997 ◽  
Vol 07 (04) ◽  
pp. 283-299
Author(s):  
Jae-Ho Choi ◽  
Bong-Tae Kim ◽  
Won-Koo Kim

A motion vector selective moving object estimation algorithm that preserves the exact shapes and textures of moving objects is presented. In order to extract multiple moving objects with arbitrary motion vectors embedded in the sequence of image frames of cluttered stationary background as alleviating the aliasing effects, both 3D spectral filter banks, called velocity-tuned filter banks, and time-recursive Kalman filter are incorporated to work in parallel. Furthermore, using the fact that the motion energy for each one of the moving objects takes a unique part of the spectrum in the 3D spatio-temporal frequency space, the rotation invariant multiple moving objects detection is also possible when using the proposed filter banks. Simulations have been run to analyze the performance of our filtering algorithm utilizing image sequences of natural scenes. The accurate and robust sets of estimation results are observed down to signal-to-noise ratios of 12 dB.


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