Elementary pattern discrimination (behavioural experiments with the fly Musca domestica)

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of spontaneous pattern discrimination by the visual system of the fly. The indicator for discrimination and attractivity of a pattern is the yaw torque of a test fly. It is shown that the pattern discrimination process may be treated as a special (“degenerate”) case of figureground discrimination which has been described in detail in earlier publications. Decisive for the discrimination process is the fact that pattern discrimination by the fly is mediated by motion detectors which respond not only a pattern velocity but also to structural properties of pattern contrast. This is demonstrated by the transition from the existing twodimensional array of motion detectors to a continuous detector field which enabled us to calculate instantaneous detector responses to instationary pattern motion. The new approach, together with the special theory for figure-ground discrimination, is then applied to predict spontaneous discriminations of onedimensional periodic patterns. It is shown that predictions and experimental results are in good agreement. The second set of discrimination experiments deals with two dimensional dot patterns for which a quantitative theory is not yet available. However, it is shown that the attractivity of a dot pattern crucially depends on both the orientation and the direction of motion relative to the fly's eyes. If the contrast of a moving dot elicits an event in a motion detector which through the detector's time constant leads to an interference with an event received by a preceeding dot, the attractivity of the dot pattern is diminished. In the discussion relations are drawn between the concepts of pattern discrimination in honey bees and the theoretical aspects of discrimination put forward in this paper. It is briefly discussed why a two-dimensional motion detector theory might become the key for an understanding of pattern categories like “figural intensity” and “figural quality”.