My long-term objectives are to understand the role of multisensory integration in object detection by investigating the behavioral patterns and cellular mechanisms that underlie its linear and nonlinear operation.  The octavolateral system of weakly electric fish contains three sensory modalities organized in spatial arrays: an active electric sense (tuberous), a passive electric sense (ampullary), and a mechanosensory lateral line. Each modality encodes unique information about changes in the near-field environment.  However, the importance of cross-modal integration for the detection of moving objects is not well established.  Currently my research analyzes a transient acceleration in electric organ discharge frequency known as the novelty response to quantify the interaction of multiple sensory modalities in object detection.