How a Frog Can Learn What Is Where in the Dark

During the night 180 lateral-line organs allow the clawed frog Xenopus to localize prey by detecting water waves emanating from insects floundering on the water surface. Not only can the frog localize prey but it can also determine its character. This suggests waveform reconstruction, and a key question is how the frog can establish the appropriate neuronal hardware. Detecting time differences arising from the input on the skin is a key to neuronal information processing, and spike-timing-dependent synaptic plasticity (STDP) therefore seems to be the natural tool. We show how supervised STDP allows a frog to learn what is where in the dark. Learning can also be derived from a minimization principle.