# Figure-ground segmentation based on motion in the archerfish

## TL;DR

Archerfish can distinguish moving objects from their background, showing advanced visual perception similar to primates.

## Contribution

Demonstrates that archerfish have complex figure-ground segmentation abilities based on motion cues.

## Key findings

- Archerfish successfully distinguished moving figures from backgrounds using motion cues.
- Their performance was comparable to primates and better than rodents in figure-ground tasks.
- The study reveals advanced visual processing in archerfish for object recognition.

## Abstract

Figure-ground segmentation is a fundamental process in visual perception that involves separating visual stimuli into distinct meaningful objects and their surrounding context, thus allowing the brain to interpret and understand complex visual scenes. Mammals exhibit varying figure-ground segmentation capabilities, ranging from primates that can perform well on figure-ground segmentation tasks to rodents that perform poorly. To explore figure-ground segmentation capabilities in teleost fish, we studied how the archerfish, an expert visual hunter, performs figure-ground segmentation. We trained archerfish to discriminate foreground objects from the background, where the figures were defined by motion as well as by discontinuities in intensity and texture. Specifically, the figures were defined by grating, naturalistic texture, and random noise moving in counterphase with the background. The archerfish performed the task well and could distinguish between all three types of figures and grounds. Their performance was comparable to that of primates and outperformed rodents. These findings suggest the existence of a complex visual process in the archerfish visual system that enables the delineation of figures as distinct from backgrounds, and provide insights into object recognition in this animal.