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17 Publications

Showing 1-10 of 17 results
Bock Lab
11/06/19 | A neural circuit arbitrates between persistence and withdrawal in hungry drosophila.
Sayin S, De Backer J, Siju KP, Wosniack ME, Lewis LP, Frisch L, Gansen B, Schlegel P, Edmondson-Stait A, Sharifi N, Fisher CB, Calle-Schuler SA, Lauritzen JS, Bock DD, Costa M, Jefferis GS, Gjorgjieva J, Grunwald Kadow IC
Neuron. 2019 Nov 6;104(3):544-58. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.07.028

In pursuit of food, hungry animals mobilize significant energy resources and overcome exhaustion and fear. How need and motivation control the decision to continue or change behavior is not understood. Using a single fly treadmill, we show that hungry flies persistently track a food odor and increase their effort over repeated trials in the absence of reward suggesting that need dominates negative experience. We further show that odor tracking is regulated by two mushroom body output neurons (MBONs) connecting the MB to the lateral horn. These MBONs, together with dopaminergic neurons and Dop1R2 signaling, control behavioral persistence. Conversely, an octopaminergic neuron, VPM4, which directly innervates one of the MBONs, acts as a brake on odor tracking by connecting feeding and olfaction. Together, our data suggest a function for the MB in internal state-dependent expression of behavior that can be suppressed by external inputs conveying a competing behavioral drive.

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Bock Lab
05/21/19 | Functional and anatomical specificity in a higher olfactory centre.
Frechter S, Bates AS, Tootoonian S, Dolan M, Manton JD, Jamasb AR, Kohl J, Bock D, Jefferis GS
Elife. 2019 May 21;8:. doi: 10.7554/eLife.44590

Most sensory systems are organized into parallel neuronal pathways that process distinct aspects of incoming stimuli. In the insect olfactory system, second order projection neurons target both the mushroom body, required for learning, and the lateral horn (LH), proposed to mediate innate olfactory behavior. Mushroom body neurons form a sparse olfactory population code, which is not stereotyped across animals. In contrast, odor coding in the LH remains poorly understood. We combine genetic driver lines, anatomical and functional criteria to show that the LH has ~1400 neurons and >165 cell types. Genetically labeled LHNs have stereotyped odor responses across animals and on average respond to three times more odors than single projection neurons. LHNs are better odor categorizers than projection neurons, likely due to stereotyped pooling of related inputs. Our results reveal some of the principles by which a higher processing area can extract innate behavioral significance from sensory stimuli.

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05/21/19 | Neurogenetic dissection of the lateral horn reveals major outputs, diverse behavioural functions, and interactions with the mushroom body.
Dolan M, Frechter S, Bates AS, Dan C, Huoviala P, Roberts RJ, Schlegel P, Dhawan S, Tabano R, Dionne H, Christoforou C, Close K, Sutcliffe B, Giuliani B, Li F, Costa M, Ihrke G, Meissner GW, Bock DD, Aso Y, Rubin GM, Jefferis GS
Elife. 2019 May 21;8:. doi: 10.7554/eLife.43079

Animals exhibit innate behaviours to a variety of sensory stimuli including olfactory cues. In , one higher olfactory centre, the lateral horn (LH), is implicated in innate behaviour. However, our structural and functional understanding of the LH is scant, in large part due to a lack of sparse neurogenetic tools for this region. We generate a collection of split-GAL4 driver lines providing genetic access to 82 LH cell types. We use these to create an anatomical and neurotransmitter map of the LH and link this to EM connectomics data. We find ~30% of LH projections converge with outputs from the mushroom body, site of olfactory learning and memory. Using optogenetic activation, we identify LH cell types that drive changes in valence behavior or specific locomotor programs. In summary, we have generated a resource for manipulating and mapping LH neurons, providing new insights into the circuit basis of innate and learned olfactory behavior.

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Card LabBock LabFlyLight
02/28/19 | Neural basis for looming size and velocity encoding in the Drosophila giant fiber escape pathway.
Ache JM, Polsky J, Alghailani S, Parekh R, Breads P, Peek MY, Bock DD, von Reyn CR, Card GM
Current Biology : CB. 2019 Feb 28;29(6):1073. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.01.079

Identified neuron classes in vertebrate cortical [1-4] and subcortical [5-8] areas and invertebrate peripheral [9-11] and central [12-14] brain neuropils encode specific visual features of a panorama. How downstream neurons integrate these features to control vital behaviors, like escape, is unclear [15]. In Drosophila, the timing of a single spike in the giant fiber (GF) descending neuron [16-18] determines whether a fly uses a short or long takeoff when escaping a looming predator [13]. We previously proposed that GF spike timing results from summation of two visual features whose detection is highly conserved across animals [19]: an object's subtended angular size and its angular velocity [5-8, 11, 20, 21]. We attributed velocity encoding to input from lobula columnar type 4 (LC4) visual projection neurons, but the size-encoding source remained unknown. Here, we show that lobula plate/lobula columnar, type 2 (LPLC2) visual projection neurons anatomically specialized to detect looming [22] provide the entire GF size component. We find LPLC2 neurons to be necessary for GF-mediated escape and show that LPLC2 and LC4 synapse directly onto the GF via reconstruction in a fly brain electron microscopy (EM) volume [23]. LPLC2 silencing eliminates the size component of the GF looming response in patch-clamp recordings, leaving only the velocity component. A model summing a linear function of angular velocity (provided by LC4) and a Gaussian function of angular size (provided by LPLC2) replicates GF looming response dynamics and predicts the peak response time. We thus present an identified circuit in which information from looming feature-detecting neurons is combined by a common post-synaptic target to determine behavioral output.

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Bock Lab
01/16/19 | Regulation of modulatory cell activity across olfactory structures in Drosophila melanogaster.
Zhang X, Coates K, Dacks A, Gunay C, Lauritzen JS, Li F, Calle-Schuler SA, Bock DD, Gaudry Q
bioRxiv. 2019 Jan 16:. doi: 10.1101/522177

All centralized nervous systems possess modulatory neurons that arborize broadly across multiple brain regions. Such modulatory systems are critical for proper sensory, motor, and cognitive processing. How single modulatory neurons integrate into circuits within their target destination remains largely unexplored due to difficulties in both labeling individual cells and imaging across distal parts of the CNS. Here, we take advantage of an identified modulatory neuron in Drosophila that arborizes in multiple olfactory neuropils. We demonstrate that this serotonergic neuron has opposing odor responses in its neurites of the antennal lobe and lateral horn, first and second order olfactory neuropils respectively. Specifically, processes of this neuron in the antennal lobe have responses that are inhibitory and odor-independent, while lateral horn responses are excitatory and odor-specific. The results show that widespread modulatory neurons may not function purely as integrate-and-fire cells, but rather their transmitter release is locally regulated based on neuropil. As nearly all vertebrate and invertebrate neurons are subject to synaptic inputs along their dendro-axonic axis, it is likely that our findings generalize across phylogeny and other broadly-projecting modulatory systems.

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09/19/18 | Communication from learned to innate olfactory processing centers is required for memory retrieval in Drosophila.
Dolan M, Belliart-Guérin G, Bates AS, Frechter S, Lampin-Saint-Amaux A, Aso Y, Roberts RJ, Schlegel P, Wong A, Hammad A, Bock D, Rubin GM, Preat T, Placais P, Jefferis GS
Neuron. 2018 Sep 19;100(3):651-68. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.08.037

The behavioral response to a sensory stimulus may depend on both learned and innate neuronal representations. How these circuits interact to produce appropriate behavior is unknown. In Drosophila, the lateral horn (LH) and mushroom body (MB) are thought to mediate innate and learned olfactory behavior, respectively, although LH function has not been tested directly. Here we identify two LH cell types (PD2a1 and PD2b1) that receive input from an MB output neuron required for recall of aversive olfactory memories. These neurons are required for aversive memory retrieval and modulated by training. Connectomics data demonstrate that PD2a1 and PD2b1 neurons also receive direct input from food odor-encoding neurons. Consistent with this, PD2a1 and PD2b1 are also necessary for unlearned attraction to some odors, indicating that these neurons have a dual behavioral role. This provides a circuit mechanism by which learned and innate olfactory information can interact in identified neurons to produce appropriate behavior.

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Bock Lab
09/06/18 | Integration of parallel opposing memories underlies memory extinction.
Felsenberg J, Jacob PF, Walker T, Barnstedt O, Edmondson-Stait AJ, Pleijzier MW, Otto N, Schlegel P, Sharifi N, Perisse E, Smith CS, Lauritzen JS, Costa M, Jefferis GS, Bock DD, Waddell S
Cell. 2018 Sep 06;175(3):709-22. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.021

Accurately predicting an outcome requires that animals learn supporting and conflicting evidence from sequential experience. In mammals and invertebrates, learned fear responses can be suppressed by experiencing predictive cues without punishment, a process called memory extinction. Here, we show that extinction of aversive memories in Drosophila requires specific dopaminergic neurons, which indicate that omission of punishment is remembered as a positive experience. Functional imaging revealed co-existence of intracellular calcium traces in different places in the mushroom body output neuron network for both the original aversive memory and a new appetitive extinction memory. Light and ultrastructural anatomy are consistent with parallel competing memories being combined within mushroom body output neurons that direct avoidance. Indeed, extinction-evoked plasticity in a pair of these neurons neutralizes the potentiated odor response imposed in the network by aversive learning. Therefore, flies track the accuracy of learned expectations by accumulating and integrating memories of conflicting events.

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07/12/18 | A complete electron microscopy volume of the brain of adult Drosophila melanogaster.
Zheng Z, Lauritzen JS, Perlman E, Robinson CG, Nichols M, Milkie DE, Torrens O, Price J, Fisher CB, Sharifi N, Calle-Schuler SA, Kmecova L, Ali IJ, Karsh B, Trautman ET, Bogovic JA, Hanslovsky P, Jefferis GS, Kazhdan M, Khairy K
Cell. 2018 Jul 12;174(3):730-43. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.019

Drosophila melanogaster has a rich repertoire of innate and learned behaviors. Its 100,000-neuron brain is a large but tractable target for comprehensive neural circuit mapping. Only electron microscopy (EM) enables complete, unbiased mapping of synaptic connectivity; however, the fly brain is too large for conventional EM. We developed a custom high-throughput EM platform and imaged the entire brain of an adult female fly at synaptic resolution. To validate the dataset, we traced brain-spanning circuitry involving the mushroom body (MB), which has been extensively studied for its role in learning. All inputs to Kenyon cells (KCs), the intrinsic neurons of the MB, were mapped, revealing a previously unknown cell type, postsynaptic partners of KC dendrites, and unexpected clustering of olfactory projection neurons. These reconstructions show that this freely available EM volume supports mapping of brain-spanning circuits, which will significantly accelerate Drosophila neuroscience..

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01/31/17 | Multicut brings automated neurite segmentation closer to human performance.
Beier T, Pape C, Rahaman N, Prange T, Berg S, Bock DD, Cardona A, Knott GW, Plaza SM, Scheffer LK, Koethe U, Kreshuk A, Hamprecht FA
Nature Methods. 2017 Jan 31;14(2):101-102. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.4151
Bock Lab
07/06/16 | A large fraction of neocortical myelin ensheathes axons of local inhibitory neurons.
Micheva KD, Wolman D, Mensh BD, Pax E, Buchanan J, Smith SJ, Bock DD
eLife. 2016 Jul 6:. doi: 10.7554/eLife.15784

Myelin is best known for its role in increasing the conduction velocity and metabolic efficiency of long-range excitatory axons. Accordingly, the myelin observed in neocortical gray matter is thought to mostly ensheath excitatory axons connecting to subcortical regions and distant cortical areas. Using independent analyses of light and electron microscopy data from mouse neocortex, we show that a surprisingly large fraction of cortical myelin (half the myelin in layer 2/3 and a quarter in layer 4) ensheathes axons of inhibitory neurons, specifically of parvalbumin-positive basket cells. This myelin differs significantly from that of excitatory axons in distribution and protein composition. Myelin on inhibitory axons is unlikely to meaningfully hasten the arrival of spikes at their pre-synaptic terminals, due to the patchy distribution and short path-lengths observed. Our results thus highlight the need for exploring alternative roles for myelin in neocortical circuits.

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