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Authors & Affiliations
Nikolas Drummond, Alexander Borst
Abstract
The motion detection circuits within Drosophila melanogaster are amongst the best characterized and understood in circuit neuroscience. Visual information is processed in four retinotopically arranged neuropils called lamina, medulla, lobula and lobula plate. Within the visual processing stream, T4 and T5 cells are the first neurons which respond to motion in a directionally selective way. T4 cells respond preferentially to moving bright edges (ON-pathway), T5 cells to moving dark edges (OFF-pathway). Both T4 and T5 cells come in four subtypes (a,b,c,d), which encode one of the four cardinal directions (anterior/posterior, posterior/anterior, upwards, downwards). On their dendrites, T4 and T5 cells receive input from different neurons, located in several adjacent columns within the medulla (T4) and the lobula (T5). All four subtypes of T4 and T5 cells receive input from the same cell types, but in a distinct subtype specific spatial order.These dendrites are oriented in the opposite direction of their preferred direction of motion. Recent acquisition of high-resolution EM data allows us to examine all T4 and T5 neurons within a single brain. Expanding on previous analysis we first investigate the spatial embedding of dendrites within the medulla and lobula, showcasing the broad distribution and variability within these classically stereotypical neurons. We further investigate the topology of the underlying tree graph description of the dendrite. We obtain the underlying probability distributions which capture the dendritic morphology of T4 and T5 neurons, allowing for more rigorous quantitative comparisons of neuron morphologies.