Meeting Abstract
34.1 Wednesday, Jan. 5 Gaze behaviors of freely walking cats RIVERS, T.J*; SIROTA, M.G.; SHAH, N.A.; GUTTENTAG, A.I.; BELOOZEROVA, I.N.; Barrow Neurological Institute; Barrow Neurological Institute; Barrow Neurological Institute; University of California, Los Angeles; Barrow Neurological Institute trevor.rivers@gmail.com
Vision is important for locomotion, particularly when an individual is moving freely through complex natural environments. Little is known, however, about how vision is used for navigation during different locomotion tasks. Using a portable eye tracker and 3-D recordings of head positions in 3 cats, we calculated where each cat’s gaze intercepted walkway surfaces during 4 separate walking tasks: (1) on a flat surface in the dark or (2) in the light; (3) on a horizontal ladder with 5cm wide crosspieces placed 25 cm apart; and (4) on a pathway cluttered with small stones. We defined 4 gaze behaviors: 1) fixation (continuously looking at a specific point on the surface), 2) constant gaze (looking a constant distance ahead), 3) gaze shifts (gaze velocity greater than twice the cat velocity), and 4) slow gaze (the remainder). The cats’ gazes intersected the walkway 26-48% of the time in the dark and 16-64% in the light. As walkway complexity increased, cats looked at the surface more, intersecting the ladder surface 72-89% of the time and the stone-cluttered walkway 88-92% of the time. Cats looked, on average, 1.5-2 steps ahead. The dominant gaze behaviors observed during all tasks were gaze shifts and fixations, together comprising 58-82% of behaviors. As walkway complexity increased, the percentage of time spent in constant gaze and fixation tended to increase while the percentage of time spent as gaze shifts decreased. There was a correlation between gaze behavior percentage and cat walking velocity; the faster a cat walked, the more it used constant and slow gaze, and the less it used gaze shifts. Cats tended to look at the edges of ladder rungs and at obstacles, not the exact point of future forelimb placement. Supported by NIH grant R01 NS-058659 to INB
