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Updated: Oct 17, 2025
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Activity of Posterior Lateral Line Afferent Neurons during Swimming in Zebrafish
Published on: February 10, 2021
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Corollary discharge enables proprioception from lateral line sensory feedback
Dimitri A Skandalis1,2, Elias T Lunsford1, James C Liao1
1Department of Biology & Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida, St. Augustine, Florida, United States of America.
Plos Biology
|October 11, 2021
Summary
Corollary discharge (CD) in fish restructures sensory feedback, enhancing proprioception during locomotion. This mechanism prevents sensory adaptation, ensuring accurate body position awareness.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Biophysics
- Sensory Biology
Background:
- Animals adjust sensory processing with motor actions.
- Corollary discharge (CD) prepares the nervous system for self-generated sensory feedback (reafference).
- Peripheral CD often cancels reafference, but this limits proprioception.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if CD to the fish lateral line organ restructures reafference to maximize proprioceptive information.
- To model how fish track peak body curvature during undulatory locomotion using CD.
Main Methods:
- Combined experimental and computational analyses of swimming biomechanics.
- Studied fish hair cell physiology.
- Developed a neuromechanical model of CD and sensory processing.
Main Results:
- CD interacts synergistically with sensor polarization to sharpen sensitivity.
- This sharpening prevents sensory adaptation by regulating neural spiking.
- CD ensures precise proprioceptive feedback during locomotion, termed external proprioception.
Conclusions:
- CD plays a vital role in enabling accurate external proprioception in fish.
- The proposed mechanism enhances the fish's awareness of its body's position and motion in fluid flows.
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