Neural mechanisms for course control in flying Drosophila.
Final Report Abstract
To navigate through the world, animals rely heavily on sensory stimuli that can indicate e.g. obstacles, food sources, potential mates or predators. How an animal reacts to such stimuli is strongly dependent on its current behavior, e.g. whether it is moving or resting. My group uses the flight maneuvers of the fruit fly Drosophila to study, how responses to sensory stimuli such as optic flow or approaching objects are initiated by the brain. We focused on descending neurons, which transmit information from the brain to the flight motor system in the ventral nerve cord, as they represent the output of the brain and are therefore highly informative about how behavior is controlled. We study descending neurons by recording their activity in a head-fixed preparation, where we can measure behavioral responses as changes in wing motion. In addition, we can manipulate their activity using genetic tools and measure behavioral responses, such as turning, in head-fixed or free flight. We found that, while there is a correlation between the activity of individual descending neurons and behavioral output, likely multiple descending neurons act together to control important flight maneuvers such as rapid turns and stabilizing optomotor responses. In addition, we could show that processing in visual neurons is also dependent on the behavioral state of the fly, such that responses to stimuli that could interfere with the currently executed flight maneuver are suppressed. Our results support the notion that in order to understand the function of neural circuits it is important to study them during behavior.
Publications
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Data sets: "looming-evoked escape saccades with moving background in Drosophila HS cell recordings", Edmond, V1.
Fischer, Philippe
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Multiple mechanisms mediate the suppression of motion vision during escape maneuvers in flying Drosophila. iScience, 25(10), 105143.
Fischer, Philippe Jules & Schnell, Bettina
