@article {69301, title = {Motor neurons generate pose-targeted movements via proprioceptive sculpting.}, journal = {Nature}, year = {2024}, month = {2024 Mar 20}, abstract = {

Motor neurons are the final common pathway through which the brain controls movement of the body, forming the basic elements from which all movement is composed. Yet how a single motor neuron contributes to control during natural movement remains unclear. Here we anatomically and functionally characterize the individual roles of the motor neurons that control head movement in the fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Counterintuitively, we find that activity in a single motor neuron rotates the head in different directions, depending on the starting posture of the head, such that the head converges towards a pose determined by the identity of the stimulated motor neuron. A feedback model predicts that this convergent behaviour results from motor neuron drive interacting with proprioceptive feedback. We identify and genetically suppress a single class of proprioceptive neuron that changes the motor neuron-induced convergence as predicted by the feedback model. These data suggest a framework for how the brain controls movements: instead of directly generating movement in a given direction by activating a fixed set of motor neurons, the brain controls movements by adding bias to a continuing proprioceptive-motor loop.

}, issn = {1476-4687}, doi = {10.1038/s41586-024-07222-5}, author = {Gorko, Benjamin and Siwanowicz, Igor and Close, Kari and Christoforou, Christina and Hibbard, Karen L and Kabra, Mayank and Lee, Allen and Park, Jin-Yong and Li, Si Ying and Chen, Alex B and Namiki, Shigehiro and Chen, Chenghao and Tuthill, John C and Bock, Davi D and Rouault, Herv{\'e} and Branson, Kristin and Ihrke, Gudrun and Huston, Stephen J} } @article {48507, title = {Angular velocity integration in a fly heading circuit.}, journal = {eLife}, volume = {6}, year = {2017}, month = {2017 May 22}, abstract = {

Many animals maintain an internal representation of their heading as they move through their surroundings. Such a compass representation was recently discovered in a neural population in the Drosophila melanogaster central complex, a brain region implicated in spatial navigation. Here, we use two-photon calcium imaging and electrophysiology in head-fixed walking flies to identify a different neural population that conjunctively encodes heading and angular velocity, and is excited selectively by turns in either the clockwise or counterclockwise direction. We show how these mirror-symmetric turn responses combine with the neurons{\textquoteright} connectivity to the compass neurons to create an elegant mechanism for updating the fly{\textquoteright}s heading representation when the animal turns in darkness. This mechanism, which employs recurrent loops with an angular shift, bears a resemblance to those proposed in theoretical models for rodent head direction cells. Our results provide a striking example of structure matching function for a broadly relevant computation.

}, issn = {2050-084X}, doi = {10.7554/eLife.23496}, author = {Turner-Evans, Daniel and Wegener, Stephanie and Rouault, Herv{\'e} and Franconville, Romain and Wolff, Tanya and Seelig, Johannes D and Druckmann, Shaul and Jayaraman, Vivek} } @article {48462, title = {Ring attractor dynamics in the Drosophila central brain.}, journal = {Science (New York, N.Y.)}, volume = {356}, year = {2017}, month = {2017 May 04}, pages = {849-53}, abstract = {

Ring attractors are a class of recurrent networks hypothesized to underlie the representation of heading direction. Such network structures, schematized as a ring of neurons whose connectivity depends on their heading preferences, can sustain a bump-like activity pattern whose location can be updated by continuous shifts along either turn direction. We recently reported that a population of fly neurons represents the animal{\textquoteright}s heading via bump-like activity dynamics. We combined two-photon calcium imaging in head-fixed flying flies with optogenetics to overwrite the existing population representation with an artificial one, which was then maintained by the circuit with naturalistic dynamics. A network with local excitation and global inhibition enforces this unique and persistent heading representation. Ring attractor networks have long been invoked in theoretical work; our study provides physiological evidence of their existence and functional architecture.

}, issn = {1095-9203}, doi = {10.1126/science.aal4835}, author = {Kim, Sung S and Rouault, Herv{\'e} and Druckmann, Shaul and Jayaraman, Vivek} }