Columnar neurons support saccadic bar tracking in Drosophila

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Abstract

Tracking visual objects while maintaining stable gaze is complicated by the different computational requirements for figure-ground discrimination, and the distinct behaviors that these computations coordinate. Drosophila melanogaster uses smooth optomotor head and body movements to stabilize gaze, and impulsive saccades to pursue elongated vertical bars. Directionally selective motion detectors T4 and T5 cells provide inputs to large-field neurons in the lobula plate, which control optomotor gaze stabilization behavior. Here, we hypothesized that an anatomically parallel pathway represented by T3 cells, which provide inputs to the lobula, drives bar tracking body saccades. We combined physiological and behavioral experiments to show that T3 neurons respond omnidirectionally to the same visual stimuli that elicit bar tracking saccades, silencing T3 reduced the frequency of tracking saccades, and optogenetic manipulation of T3 acted on the saccade rate in a push-pull manner. Manipulating T3 did not affect smooth optomotor responses to large-field motion. Our results show that parallel neural pathways coordinate smooth gaze stabilization and saccadic bar tracking behavior during flight.

Data availability

Source data plus Matlab and R analysis code for all figures is provided on OSF https://osf.io/c9n4y/

The following data sets were generated

1. Frighetto G
2. Frye MA
(2023) Data and Analysis Code from: Columnar neurons support saccadic object tracking in Drosophila
OSF DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/C9N4Y.

https://osf.io/c9n4y/

Article and author information

Author details

Giovanni Frighetto

Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Mark A Frye

Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States

For correspondence
frye@ucla.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3277-3094

Funding

National Eye Institute (EY026031)

Mark A Frye

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.