Building a functional connectome of the Drosophila central complex

Abstract
Data availability
Article and author information
Metrics

Abstract

The central complex is a highly conserved insect brain region composed of morphologically stereotyped neurons that arborize in distinctively shaped substructures. The region is implicated in a wide range of behaviors and several modeling studies have explored its circuit computations. Most studies have relied on assumptions about connectivity between neurons based on their overlap in light microscopy images. Here, we present an extensive functional connectome of Drosophila melanogaster's central complex at cell-type resolution. Using simultaneous optogenetic stimulation, calcium imaging and pharmacology, we tested the connectivity between 70 presynaptic-to-postsynaptic cell-type pairs. We identi1ed numerous inputs to the central complex, but only a small number of output channels. Additionally, the connectivity of this highly recurrent circuit appears to be sparser than anticipated from light microscopy images. Finally, the connectivity matrix highlights the potentially critical role of a class of bottleneck interneurons. All data is provided for interactive exploration on a website.

Data availability

All the data generated or analyzed during this study is freely available for exploration at:https://romainfr.github.io/CX-Functional-Website/All code and data are available at:https://osf.io/vsa3z/

The following data sets were generated

1. Franconville R
(2018) Central complex functional connectivity
DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/VSA3Z | ARK c7605/osf.io/vsa3z.

https://osf.io/vsa3z/

Article and author information

Author details

Romain Franconville

Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States

For correspondence
franconviller@janelia.hhmi.org

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4440-7297
Celia Beron

Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Vivek Jayaraman

Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, United States

For correspondence
vivek@janelia.hhmi.org

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3680-7378

Funding

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Romain Franconville
Celia Beron
Vivek Jayaraman

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

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.