The neural basis for a persistent internal state in Drosophila females

Abstract

Sustained changes in mood or action require persistent changes in neural activity, but it has been difficult to identify the neural circuit mechanisms that underlie persistent activity and contribute to long-lasting changes in behavior. Here, we show that a subset of Doublesex+ pC1 neurons in the Drosophila female brain, called pC1d/e, can drive minutes-long changes in female behavior in the presence of males. Using automated reconstruction of a volume electron microscopic (EM) image of the female brain, we map all inputs and outputs to both pC1d and pC1e. This reveals strong recurrent connectivity between, in particular, pC1d/e neurons and a specific subset of Fruitless+ neurons called aIPg. We additionally find that pC1d/e activation drives long-lasting persistent neural activity in brain areas and cells overlapping with the pC1d/e neural network, including both Doublesex+ and Fruitless+ neurons. Our work thus links minutes-long persistent changes in behavior with persistent neural activity and recurrent circuit architecture in the female brain.

A connectome of theDrosophilacentral complex reveals network motifs suitable for flexible navigation and context-dependent action selection

“…These links have proven to be valuable both for generating hypotheses and for experimentally testing them (Green et al, 2017;Klapoetke et al, 2017;Morimoto et al, 2020;Turner-Evans et al, 2017;Turner-Evans et al, 2020). This recent history gives us reason to expect that connectomics (Eichler et al, 2017;Ohyama et al, 2015;Schlegel et al, 2020;Takemura et al, 2017a;Takemura et al, 2017b;White et al, 1986;Zheng et al, 2018) will continue to accelerate studies of circuit function (Bentley et al, 2016;Deutsch et al, 2020;Eschbach and Zlatic, 2020;Gordus et al, 2015;Jovanic et al, 2016;Morimoto et al, 2020;Ohyama et al, 2015;Schretter et al, 2020;Tastekin et al, 2018;Turner-Evans et al, 2020). CX circuits, in particular, are thought to be involved a wide variety of flexible, context-dependent behaviors (Honkanen et al, 2019;Turner-Evans and Jayaraman, 2016).…”

A neuronal ensemble encoding adaptive choice during sensory conflict in Drosophila

“…While the mechanistic basis of integration of internal state and external stimuli on a molecular or biophysical level in the Drosophila higher-order brain remains unclear, prior studies reveal some cell-populations and brain regions that are involved in various decision making contexts. Various neuromodulatory and other neurons regulate hunger dependent food intake [40][41][42][43][44][45][46] , hunger dependent odor encoding and food search [47][48][49] , reward 13,[50][51][52] or punishment 53 , memory 12,13,52 , and internal state for courtship [54][55][56] . The mushroom body is an insect central brain region involved in gustatory learning and memory 31,57 and valence encoding 58 , and is thought to be a major center controlling higher-order behaviors 47 , including associative learning [59][60][61] .…”

Flexible Circuit Mechanisms for Context-Dependent Song Sequencing

“…We imaged brain activity of Dsx+ cells in the VNC following pIP10 optogenetic activation using a custom-built two-photon laser scanning microscope [68,76]. Virgin male flies (5-8 days old) were mounted and dissected as described previously [31], with minor differences.…”