Topic: looming stimuli

Freezing is an active state of immobility which is used by many species as a form of defense in response to threat. In drosophila, previous work has identified factors – such as the amount of motion from surrounding flies – that regulate the probability and duration of freezing, but we currently lack a mechanistic understanding of how these factors shape freezing duration quantitatively. Here, we developed a theory where the dynamics of freezing are governed by bounded accumulation of evidence (BAE) about safety, using data from a paradigm where flies in an arena experience a series of looming