Drosophila melanogster is a model organism rich in genetic tools to manipulate and identify neural circuits involved in specific behaviors. Here we present a novel technique for two-photon calcium imaging in the central brain of head-fixed Drosophila walking on an air-supported ball. The ball’s motion is tracked at high resolution and can be treated as a proxy for the fly’s own movements. We used the genetically encoded calcium sensor, GCaMP3.0, to record from important elements of the motion-processing pathway, the horizontal-system (HS) lobula plate tangential cells (LPTCs) in the fly optic lobe. We presented motion stimuli to the tethered fly and found that calcium transients in HS-neurons correlated with robust optomotor behavior during walking. Our technique allows an entirely new set of questions to be addressed by monitoring behavior and physiology in identified neurons in a powerful genetic model organism with an extensive repertoire of walking behaviors.

Behavioral strategies employed for chemotaxis have been described across phyla, but the sensorimotor basis of this phenomenon has seldom been studied in naturalistic contexts. Here, we examine how signals experienced during free olfactory behaviors are processed by first-order olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) of the Drosophila larva. We find that OSNs can act as differentiators that transiently normalize stimulus intensity—a property potentially derived from a combination of integral feedback and feed-forward regulation of olfactory transduction. In olfactory virtual reality experiments, we report that high activity levels of the OSN suppress turning, whereas low activity levels facilitate turning. Using a generalized linear model, we explain how peripheral encoding of olfactory stimuli modulates the probability of switching from a run to a turn. Our work clarifies the link between computations carried out at the sensory periphery and action selection underlying navigation in odor gradients.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06694.001

No abstract

Animals rely on visual motion for navigating the world, and research in flies has clarified how neural circuits extract information from moving visual scenes. However, the major pathways connecting these patterns of optic flow to behavior remain poorly understood. Using a high-throughput quantitative assay of visually guided behaviors and genetic neuronal silencing, we discovered a region in Drosophila's protocerebrum critical for visual motion following. We used neuronal silencing, calcium imaging, and optogenetics to identify a single cell type, LPC1, that innervates this region, detects translational optic flow, and plays a key role in regulating forward walking. Moreover, the population of LPC1s can estimate the traveling direction, such as when gaze direction diverges from body heading. By linking specific cell types and their visual computations to specific behaviors, our findings establish a foundation for understanding how the nervous system uses vision to guide navigation.