A connectome of the Drosophila central complex reveals network motifs suitable for flexible navigation and context-dependent action selection
- Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States
Abstract
Flexible behaviors over long timescales are thought to engage recurrent neural networks in deep brain regions, which are experimentally challenging to study. In insects, recurrent circuit dynamics in a brain region called the central complex (CX) enable directed locomotion, sleep, and context- and experience-dependent spatial navigation. We describe the first complete electron-microscopy-based connectome of the Drosophila CX, including all its neurons and circuits at synaptic resolution. We identified new CX neuron types, novel sensory and motor pathways, and network motifs that likely enable the CX to extract the fly’s head-direction, maintain it with attractor dynamics, and combine it with other sensorimotor information to perform vector-based navigational computations. We also identified numerous pathways that may facilitate the selection of CX-driven behavioral patterns by context and internal state. The CX connectome provides a comprehensive blueprint necessary for a detailed understanding of network dynamics underlying sleep, flexible navigation, and state-dependent action selection.
Data availability
All data are freely available at https://neuprint.janelia.org/
Article and author information
Author details
Romain Franconville
Daniel B Turner-Evans
Funding
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Romain Franconville
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2021, Hulse 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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A connectome of the Drosophila central complex reveals network motifs suitable for flexible navigation and context-dependent action selection
eLife 10:e66039.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66039
Further reading
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- Computational and Systems Biology
- Neuroscience
The neural circuits responsible for animal behavior remain largely unknown. We summarize new methods and present the circuitry of a large fraction of the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Improved methods include new procedures to prepare, image, align, segment, find synapses in, and proofread such large data sets. We define cell types, refine computational compartments, and provide an exhaustive atlas of cell examples and types, many of them novel. We provide detailed circuits consisting of neurons and their chemical synapses for most of the central brain. We make the data public and simplify access, reducing the effort needed to answer circuit questions, and provide procedures linking the neurons defined by our analysis with genetic reagents. Biologically, we examine distributions of connection strengths, neural motifs on different scales, electrical consequences of compartmentalization, and evidence that maximizing packing density is an important criterion in the evolution of the fly’s brain.
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- Neuroscience
Studying neurons and their connections in the central complex of the fruit fly reveals new insights into how their structure and function shape perception and behavior.
