Topic: visual motion cues

Many animals use visual motion cues to track and pursue small, fast-moving prey or to track conspecifics. The pursuit of small visual targets is a hard problem and understanding the underlying neural circuits will inform similar studies in other animals and open avenues for bio-inspired robotics. In dragonflies and hoverflies, the target-sensitive neurons found in the optic lobes are known as small target motion detectors (STMDs). STMDs are believed to be presynaptic to the target selective descending neurons (TSDNs) that are in turn presynaptic to motor neurons. In TSDNs, the response to targ