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Main Menu - Block
- Overview
- Anatomy and Histology
- Cryo-Electron Microscopy
- Electron Microscopy
- Flow Cytometry
- Gene Targeting and Transgenics
- Immortalized Cell Line Culture
- Integrative Imaging
- Invertebrate Shared Resource
- Janelia Experimental Technology
- Mass Spectrometry
- Media Prep
- Molecular Genomics
- Primary & iPS Cell Culture
- Project Pipeline Support
- Project Technical Resources
- Quantitative Genomics
- Scientific Computing Software
- Scientific Computing Systems
- Viral Tools
- Vivarium

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'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.