8/3/2023 0 Comments Reality luxcorerender![]() ![]() 1b,c and Supplementary Figure S1), the spherical glass bulb allows for larger homogeneously accessible visual space (see the spherical panorama views covering 360° in azimuth and 180° in elevation in Fig. In comparison to the Petri dish lid and the cylindrical container (Fig. During the experiment, the animal is immobilized on the tip of a triangular stage located in the center of the spherical glass bulb (Supplementary Figure S1). The glass bulb container is 8 cm in diameter and has an opening of 4.8 cm (in diameter) on the top, which allows for in vivo microscopy using a water immersion objective from above (Fig. 1c), and a new spherical glass container that we designed to minimize artifacts (Fig. Here, we compare the occurring optical artifacts of three different containers for aquatic animals: a commonly used Petri dish lid (Fig. In many previous studies on zebrafish vision, the potential occurrence of stimulus artifacts had received little attention 12, although superior container designs had already successfully been used for other fish species 25. round walls) will have a profound impact on the path of the light transitioning into water. Given the different refractive indices of water, air, and the container material, the shape of the container (e.g. The underwater presentation of visual stimuli can suffer from a range of optical artifacts, such as total internal reflection (TIR), light refraction, general reflection, dispersion, water meniscus, and light absorption (Fig. Moreover, we demonstrate the optical advantages of the new glass bulb using optical simulations and functional neural activity recordings.ĭesign and optical advantages of a spherical glass container ![]() ![]() Here, we make use of Snell’s law, which posits that disruptive optical effects are quite small when light beams pass through an optical interface orthogonally, and design a new spherical glass bulb container, coupled with an adjustable rotation mount holder to optimize vision experiments in small-size fish. However, the waterproof protection for the electronic setup is usually difficult to ascertain and it may cause optical disturbances itself. Alternatively, the stimulus delivery system could be set underwater, surrounding the experimental animal. For example, during the presentation of global optic flow, the motion consistency across the visual field may be disrupted. Electronics need to be kept outside of the water, and therefore visual stimuli are oftentimes blurred and distorted before they reach the animal eyes, which mainly results from light refraction and reflection and the associated geometrical optics at the air-container-water interfaces 12, 24. fish) gives rise to additional challenges, since an underwater environment is required during the experiments 20, 23. Ideally the stimulus surface should completely cover their visual fields, and the platform supporting the animal should allow for a large accessible view field for the animals 20– 22.įurthermore, research using aquatic model animals (e.g. Therefore, presenting high quality visual stimulus patterns to the animal eyes is crucial for the investigation of visual functions and neural encoding 12.Ī conventional mounting platform, equipped with a standard-size monitor or a small LCD screen, is suitable for neural direction selectivity and receptive field (RF) mapping analysis of the vertebrate optic tectum 7, 13, since the RFs of most tectal neurons are small 13– 15 and visual stimulus parameters, such as contrast and spatial frequency, are easy to control with programmable hardware and software 16, 17.ĭue to the large RFs of some of the neurons as well as the large binocular fields of view in the lateral-eyed zebrafish 18, 19, the stimulus delivery system needs to cover a large proportion of the visual space surrounding both eyes. The visual system extracts features from stimulus patterns, and, accordingly, visual neurons can respond to a range of features such as contrast, motion direction, spatial frequency, sizes, locations and shapes of the visual stimulus 5, 7– 11. In vision research, an important standard protocol is to present visual stimuli to immobilized animals while recording behaviors and/or neuronal activity 1– 6. ![]()
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