Sensory Flow as a Basis for a Novel Distance Cue in Freely Behaving Electric Fish

The sensory input that an animal receives is directly linked to its motor activity. Behavior thus enables animals to influence their sensory input, a concept referred to as active sensing. How such behavior can serve as a scaffold for generating sensory information is of general scientific interest. In this article, we investigate how behavior can shape sensory information by using some unique features of the sensorimotor system of the weakly electric fish. Based on quantitative behavioral characterizations and computational reconstruction of sensory input, we show how electrosensory flow is actively created during highly patterned, spontaneous behavior in Gnathonemus petersii. The spatiotemporal structure of the sensory input provides information for the computation of a novel distance cue, which allows for a continuous estimation of distance. This has significant advantages over previously known nondynamic distance estimators as determined from electric image blur. Our investigation of the sensorimotor interactions in pulsatile electrolocation shows, for the first time, that the electrosensory flow contains behaviorally relevant information accessible only through active behavior. As patterned sensory behaviors are a shared feature of (active) sensory systems, our results have general implications for the understanding of (active) sensing, with the proposed sensory flow-based measure being potentially pertinent to a broad range of sensory modalities.