Topic: fan-shaped body

The structure of neural circuitry plays a crucial role in brain function. Previous studies of brain organization generally had to trade off between coarse descriptions at a large scale and fine descriptions on a small scale. Researchers have now reconstructed tens to hundreds of thousands of neurons at synaptic resolution, enabling investigations into the interplay between global, modular organization, and cell type-specific wiring. Analyzing data of this scale, however, presents unique challenges. To address this problem we applied novel community detection methods to analyze the synapse-leve

The organization of neural circuitry plays a role in brain function. Investigations into this organization have generally had to trade off between coarse descriptions at a large scale and fine descriptions on a very small scale, due to the constraints of the tools and data processing methods available. Recently, reconstructions of tens to hundreds of thousands of neurons at synaptic resolution have been published, enabling investigations into the interplay between global, modular organization, and cell type-specific wiring. Analysis of these enormous data sets requires the development of new m

The navigational behavior of many animals relies on internal representations of space. These representations are often encoded in a world-centric (allocentric) reference frame. To use these representations to guide behavior, animals must transform them to a body-centric (egocentric) reference frame. We took advantage of the experimental tractability of Drosophila melanogaster to determine how neurons in its brain perform this computation. In the fly brain, directions are encoded as vectors in an allocentric reference frame by neurons in a region called the central complex. We investigated whet

Many animals rely on olfactory cues to navigate their environments. For example, insects are particularly adept at locating odor sources. The navigational algorithms of insects have often been modeled as simple sensorimotor reflexes based on instantaneous cues: surging upwind when encountering the odor and casting crosswind when losing contact with the odor. To investigate whether insects rely on their past sensory experience to guide olfactory-based navigation, we developed a virtual reality olfactory set-up for Drosophila that allows precise closed-loop control over odor encounters. We found

Sleep is a crucial part of everyday life, but the neural networks that regulate behavioural manifestations of sleep are not fully understood. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, dorsal fan-shaped body neurons (dFBNs) sit at the centre of homeostatic sleep control: the neurons’ excitability increases with sleep drive, and their artificial activation induces sleep. Despite significant advances in understanding of the molecular events that regulate the activity of dFBNs, insight into how they impose sleep on the organism is still lagging. By combining optogenetics and in vivo patch-clamp re