Summary
The catfishSynodontis nigriventris normally swims upside-down but can assume any posture in response to a substrate it swims close to. Postural reflexes of the body and the eyes, labyrinthine anatomy and passively maintained posture were investigated to obtain indications for possible mechanisms controlling the peculiar postural behavior of this fish. Saccade-like resetting movements of the eyes during counter-roll to body tilt about the longitudinal axis, and maintained tilted swimming positions in blinded fish suggest that these animals reset their vestibular CNS circuits to zero when in tilted positions.Synodontis nigriventris is thus able to maintain any posture without interference from tilt-counteracting vestibular reflexes. The normal upside-down swimming apparently results from a central bias for this position and a supporting ventral light response.
We conclude that if the “reafference principle” applies to the phenomena investigated, the efference copy may be fed through an integrator before reaching vestibular reflex circuits.
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Supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (ME 526/1-4, SFB 33), NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship (1F22 NS03010-01 NEUB) to CP, NASA, NSF and NIH grants to Dr. T.H. Bullock and NASA grant (NGR 47-005-186) to Dr. S.O.E. Ebbesson
We wish to thank Dr. T.H. Bullock and Mr. E. Knudsen for critically reading the manuscript and Mr. W. Bloodworth and Mr. W. Reetz for their help in maintaining the animals and building the experimental set-ups used in this study.
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Meyer, D.L., Platt, C. & Distel, H.J. Postural control mechanisms in the upside-down catfish (Synodontis nigriventris). J. Comp. Physiol. 110, 323–331 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00659148
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00659148