Encoding and control of orientation to airflow by a set of Drosophila fan-shaped body neurons
Abstract
The insect Central Complex (CX) is thought to underlie goal-oriented navigation but its functional organization is not fully understood. We recorded from genetically-identified CX cell types in Drosophila and presented directional visual, olfactory, and airflow cues known to elicit orienting behavior. We found that a group of neurons targeting the ventral fan-shaped body (ventral P-FNs) are robustly tuned for airflow direction. Ventral P-FNs did not generate a 'map' of airflow direction. Instead, cells in each hemisphere were tuned to 45° ipsilateral, forming a pair of orthogonal bases. Imaging experiments suggest that ventral P-FNs inherit their airflow tuning from neurons that provide input from the lateral accessory lobe (LAL) to the noduli (NO). Silencing ventral P-FNs prevented flies from selecting appropriate corrective turns following changes in airflow direction. Our results identify a group of central complex neurons that robustly encode airflow direction and are required for proper orientation to this stimulus.
Data availability
All electrophysiology, behavior, and anatomy data are publicly available on Dryad at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vq83bk3rh.
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Encoding and control of airflow orientation by a set of Drosophila fan-shaped body neuronsDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.vq83bk3rh.
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A connectome of the Adult Drosophila Central Braindoi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.21.911859.
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neuPrint: Analysis Tools for EM Connectomicsdoi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.16.909465.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01DC017979)
- Katherine I Nagel
National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH109690)
- Katherine I Nagel
McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience (Scholar Award)
- Katherine I Nagel
National Science Foundation (IOS-1555933)
- Katherine I Nagel
New York University (Dean's Fellowship)
- Timothy A Currier
National Science Foundation (neuronex)
- Katherine I Nagel
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Ronald L Calabrese, Emory University, United States
Version history
- Received: July 28, 2020
- Accepted: December 29, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: December 30, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: January 8, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Currier 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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