Genetic Dissection of the Fly Visual Course Control

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Axel Borst
• Monday 12 November 2012, 16:30-17:30
• Hodgkin-Huxley Lecture Theatre, Department of Physiology Development and Neuroscience.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact phm28.

Visual navigation has been studied extensively in flies, both in tethered as well as in freely flying animals. As neural control elements, the tangential cells of the lobula plate seem to play a key role: they are sensitive to visual motion, have large receptive fields, and, with their spatial distribution of preferred directions, match the optic flow as elicited during certain types of flight maneuvers. However, several key questions have remained unanswered for long: 1. What is the neural circuit presynaptic to the tangential cells responsible for extracting the local direction of motion? 2. Do the lobula plate tangential cells indeed control turning responses of the fly? 3. Is there a separate visual course control system allowing the fly to detect and track individual objects? I will present recent progress towards answering these questions made by combining whole-cell patch recording and behavioral studies with silencing and optogenetic stimulation of genetically targeted candidate neurons in Drosophila.

References.

Borst, A., Haag, J. & Reiff, D.F. (2010). Fly Motion Vision. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 33, 49–70.

Eichner, H., Joesch, M., Schnell, B. & Borst, A. (2011). Internal Structure of the Fly Elementary Motion Detector. Neuron 70, 1155–1164.

Joesch, M., Schnell, B., Varija Raghu, S., Reiff, D.F. & Borst, A. (2010). On and Off Pathways in Drosophila Motion Vision. Nature, L468 , 300-304.

This talk is part of the Adrian Seminars in Neuroscience series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Adrian Seminars in Neuroscience
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Biology
• Biology
• DevBio
• Developmental Biology Seminar Series
• Featured lists
• Hodgkin-Huxley Lecture Theatre, Department of Physiology Development and Neuroscience
• Life Science
• Life Sciences
• Life Sciences
• Neuroscience
• Neuroscience Seminars
• Neuroscience Seminars
• Neuroscience Seminars
• New Talks list
• Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine
• ss817 list

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.