Figure 7.

Figure 7.

Summary of behavioral abnormalities in escape response in auts2a mutants. Top, In response to threatening stimuli, the ipsilateral Mauthner neuron and its homologs in the hindbrain (marked in a dashed box) fire reliably (yellow) resulting in short latency escape responses across consecutive trials (left to right) in wild-type larvae. Bottom, In auts2a mutants, Mauthner neurons fire unreliably. This means that on some trials, larvae exhibit normal short latency escapes when the Mauthner neuron is able to fire (left). On trials, where the Mauthner fails to fire, long latency escape responses may be initiated perhaps because of the activation of homologs (middle) and if neither the Mauthner, nor the homologs fire, then the larvae fail to respond (right). “?” denotes putative activity in Mauthner homologs during Mauthner-mediated and non-Mauthner-mediated escapes.