Neural responses of goldfish lateral line afferents to vortex motions

The lateral line system of fish is sensitive to weak water motions. We recorded from posterior lateral line nerve afferents while stimulating goldfish, Carassius auratus, with unidirectional water flow and with a vortex ring. Posterior lateral line afferents of goldfish were either flow sensitive or flow insensitive. Both types of afferents responded to a vortex ring that passed the fish laterally with one to three reproducible patterns of neural activity, followed by activity patterns that were less reproducible. Using particle image velocimetry, we visualized and quantified the water motions in the vertical plane next to the surface of the fish while recording from lateral line afferents. Early response components correlated with the direction of water motions that occurred at the position of the neuromast recorded from. By contrast, neural activity that occurred after the vortex had passed the fish barely predicted the direction of water motions. These results are in agreement with the known directional sensitivity of hair cells and indicate that fish might be able to extract sensory information from complex stimuli like vortices by comparing the activity of a whole array of neuromasts. The stimulus used in this study is novel to lateral line research and resembles some of the hydrodynamic stimuli that fish might encounter in their natural environments. We expect that by combining naturalistic hydrodynamic stimuli and central nervous recordings, we will learn if and how hydrodynamic feature detection is accomplished by the lateral line system.