Social flight cues – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

Ancient Midbrain Circuit Decodes Social Escape Cues

Researchers at UC San Diego discovered an evolutionarily conserved midbrain circuit that detects the escape movements, and sudden disappearances, of social partners to trigger rapid collective avoidance. Using transparent glassfish and video-game-simulated virtual schools, the study reveals how visual nervous systems evolved to infer unseen predators purely through social cues in low-visibility environments. Ancient Visual Circuit: Recording whole-brain activity in the transparent glassfish Danionella cerebrum, researchers pinpointed neurons in an evolutionarily ancient visual midbrain area, shared across fish, birds, and primates, that specifically decode the escape actions of neighboring peers. ….[READ]