REPRESENTATION OF NAVIGATIONAL CUES IN THE CENTRAL BRAIN OF DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER

Drosophila melanogaster is a well-established model organism for dissecting neural circuits, enabling the investigation of neuronal connectivity and activity, linking them to behavior. In particular, Drosophila has a sophisticated visual system that enables demanding visual tasks such as visually guided navigation, making it an ideal model for studying visual processing and navigation.

By integrating multiple visual cues, like the position of the sun, chromatic gradients, and polarized skylight, many insects are able to navigate in their environment. These capabilities rely on the anterior visual pathway (AVP), which plays a key role in processing navigational landmarks. Within the AVP, there are multiple visual projection neurons MeTu which project from the optic lobe to the anterior optic tubercle (AOTU) and connect to TuBu neurons, which in turn relay information to the central complex. Some of these MeTu pathways are involved in processing polarization and in this project, we focus on understanding why they are different and what is the function for parallel processing of polarized skylight cues. Specifically, we investigate functional properties and behavioral contributions of different MeTu and TuBu neuron types in the AOTU. We aim to characterize differences between parallel AVP pathways involved in the processing of polarized skylight and to determine what types of information they provide for subsequent integration.

To address these questions, we employ an interdisciplinary approach combining immunohistochemistry, two-photon calcium imaging, behavioral assays with transgenic neuronal silencing, and electron microscopy based connectomics to analyze synaptic connectivity and to potentially predict neural responses.