Event Abstract Back to Event Dendritic membrane properties influence multimodal integration for fast behavioral decision Violeta Medan1, 2*, Heike Neumeister1 and Thomas Preuss1 1 Hunter College, City University of New York, Psychology Dept., United States 2 Universidad de Buenos Aires, Physiology and Celullar and Molecular Biology, Argentina Animals integrate information from different sensory modalities to form a percept of the world that allows adaptive behavioral decisions. However, our understanding of how multimodal integration is implemented at the dendritic level is still scant. We address this question in the startle escape (Mauthner-cell) network of goldfish. The paired Mauthner-cells receive auditory and visual inputs via two separate dendrites, both accessible for intracellular recordings, in vivo. Moreover, a single Mauthner-cell action potential triggers the startle response providing a behavioral readout for the underlying threshold computation. In the behavioral experiments (N=6) we used visual loom stimuli (600 ms duration) and sound pips (200Hz, 69dB) presented either individually or together and measured the evoked startle escape rates. The rate increased with combined stimuli to 71.5% ±12 SEM, which was larger than the arithmetic sum of the escape rates for auditory (12% ±5 SEM) or visual (38% ±9 SEM) stimuli alone. This implies a supralinear integration of the input modalities. To elucidate putative non-linearities we recorded synaptic responses in the Mauthner-cell soma and compared the amplitudes of subthreshold sound EPSPs with or without an underlying visually-evoked membrane depolarization. Results show a supralinear increase of the sound EPSP in combination trials that averaged 21%, complementing the behavioral results. Since there is at least one order of magnitude difference between processing times for sound pips (~2 ms) and visual looms (100’s of ms) we next asked if the dendrites receiving visual and auditory inputs have membrane cable properties optimized to accommodate these distinct processing times. Indeed, sequential recordings along the visual and auditory dendrites (N=10) revealed space constants of 131μm ±17 SEM and 86μm ±12 SEM, respectively. These non-uniform properties of the Mauthner-cell dendrites might influence integration along different time scales ultimately allowing multimodal perception for effective decision-making. Keywords: escape response, Goldfish, intrinsic properties, Mauthner Cell, multimodal integration Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012. Presentation Type: Poster (but consider for Participant Symposium) Topic: Sensorimotor Integration Citation: Medan V, Neumeister H and Preuss T (2012). Dendritic membrane properties influence multimodal integration for fast behavioral decision. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00062 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 10 May 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012. * Correspondence: Dr. Violeta Medan, Hunter College, City University of New York, Psychology Dept., New York, New York, 10065, United States, violetamedan@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Violeta Medan Heike Neumeister Thomas Preuss Google Violeta Medan Heike Neumeister Thomas Preuss Google Scholar Violeta Medan Heike Neumeister Thomas Preuss PubMed Violeta Medan Heike Neumeister Thomas Preuss Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.