Topic: limb movements

To understand how the brain controls behavior, we need to understand the neural code for movement. Descending neurons (DNs) represent a bottleneck for motor control signals, and so provide an opportunity to study neural coding in a compact form. In Drosophila, almost all DNs are uniquely identifiable in the connectome of the central nervous system and targetable with specific genetic drivers, allowing us to study their connectivity and physiology in parallel. Previous studies have concluded that these DNs generate high-level motor commands, such as “stop” or “turn”, leaving the detailed implem