Cognitive Control of Escape Behaviour

Abstract

When faced with potential predators, animals instinctively decide whether there is a threat they should escape from, and also when, how, and where to take evasive action. While escape is often viewed in classical ethology as an action that is released upon presentation of specific stimuli, successful and adaptive escape behaviour relies on integrating information from sensory systems, stored knowledge, and internal states. From a neuroscience perspective, escape is an incredibly rich model that provides opportunities for investigating processes such as perceptual and value-based decision-making, or action selection, in an ethological setting. We review recent research from laboratory and field studies that explore, at the behavioural and mechanistic levels, how elements from multiple information streams are integrated to generate flexible escape behaviour.

Highlights

Escape behaviours are not only simple stimulus-reactions but are under cognitive control, allowing the study of processes such as decision-making and action selection in tractable organisms in ethological settings.

Successful escape relies on integrating multiple external and internal variables, such as for computing flight trajectories towards shelter, and implementing trade-offs by choosing between actions that satisfy competing motivations.

Some neural mechanisms of escape are innate and conserved across species, but are subject to control and modification by multiple systems, including the neocortex, which allow experience to be flexibly incorporated into escape behaviour.

New tools to quantify behaviour while recording neural activity enable analysis of ethologically-relevant behaviours in complex environments, and will advance our understanding of the neural basis of natural behaviours.