Final Report Summary - FLYVISUALCIRCUITS (Linking neural circuits to visual guidance in flying flies)
Scientifically, we made use of these new technologies to investigate the neural circuits underlying visually guided locomotion in Drosophila. We discovered that a ubiquitous phenomenon in biological motion detection - asymmetric responses to motion - gives rise in simplified models to phenomena which have been observed in behavioral experiments from many labs over many decades. For example, wide-field motion detecting neurons such as the lobula plate tangential cells are known to respond asymmetrically. That is, motion in the preferred direction creases larger amplitude depolarization than motion in the null direction causes hyperpolarization. Model flies with a visual system composed of only such asymmetric wide-field motion detectors are capable of turning towards visual objects, a phenomenon previously argued to require use of additional circuitry. Thus, we have shown how known circuits may serve a greater range of behavior than previously realized. In additional work, we made a neuro-anatomical description of the Drosophila optic glomeruli and the neurons projecting to these important visual brain regions. This work was performed by using a novel approach that identifies brain compartments based on expression patterns of genomic sequences corresponding to putative transcriptional enhancers.