1. Neuroscience

Computations underlying Drosophila photo-taxis, odor-taxis, and multi-sensory integration

  1. Ruben Gepner
  2. Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata
  3. Natalie M Bernat
  4. Margarita Kaplow
  5. Marc Gershow  Is a corresponding author
  1. New York University, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06229
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  1. Ruben Gepner
  2. Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata
  3. Natalie M Bernat
  4. Margarita Kaplow
  5. Marc Gershow
(2015)
Computations underlying Drosophila photo-taxis, odor-taxis, and multi-sensory integration
eLife 4:e06229.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06229
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Abstract

To better understand how organisms make decisions on the basis of temporally varying multi-sensory input, we identified computations made by Drosophila larvae responding to visual and optogenetically induced fictive olfactory stimuli. We modeled the larva's navigational decision to initiate turns as the output of a Linear-Nonlinear-Poisson cascade. We used reverse-correlation to fit parameters to this model; the parameterized model predicted larvae's responses to novel stimulus patterns. For multi-modal inputs, we found that larvae linearly combine olfactory and visual signals upstream of the decision to turn. We verified this prediction by measuring larvae's responses to coordinated changes in odor and light. We studied other navigational decisions and found that larvae integrated odor and light according to the same rule in all cases. These results suggest that photo-taxis and odor-taxis are mediated by a shared computational pathway.

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Author details

  1. Ruben Gepner

    Department of Physics, New York University, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  2. Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata

    Department of Physics, New York University, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Natalie M Bernat

    Department of Physics, New York University, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Margarita Kaplow

    Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Marc Gershow

    Department of Physics, New York University, New York, United States
    For correspondence
    mhg4@nyu.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Copyright

© 2015, Gepner et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Ruben Gepner
  2. Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata
  3. Natalie M Bernat
  4. Margarita Kaplow
  5. Marc Gershow
(2015)
Computations underlying Drosophila photo-taxis, odor-taxis, and multi-sensory integration
eLife 4:e06229.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06229

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06229

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