Usage of a Sensory-Motor Intervention System for Understanding the Adaptive Behavior of Insects

Abstract

Despite their diminutive neural systems, insects exhibit sophisticated adaptive behaviors in diverse environments. An insect receives various environmental stimuli through its sensory organs and selectively and rapidly integrates them to produce an adaptive motor output. Living organisms commonly have this sensory-motor integration, and attempts have been made for many years to elucidate this mechanism biologically and reconstruct it through engineering. In this review, we provide an overview of the biological analyses of the adaptive capacity of insects and introduce a framework of engineering tools to intervene in insect sensory and behavioral processes. The manifestation of adaptive insect behavior is intricately linked to dynamic environmental interactions, underscoring the significance of experiments maintaining this relationship. An experimental setup incorporating engineering techniques can manipulate the sensory stimuli and motor output of insects while maintaining this relationship. It can contribute to obtaining data that could not be obtained in experiments conducted under controlled environments. Moreover, it may be possible to analyze an insect’s adaptive capacity limits by varying the degree of sensory and motor intervention. Currently, experimental setups based on the framework of engineering tools only measure behavior; therefore, it is not possible to investigate how sensory stimuli are processed in the central nervous system. The anticipated future developments, including the integration of calcium imaging and electrophysiology, hold promise for a more profound understanding of the adaptive prowess of insects.