Visual-proprioceptive integration
How does the brain coordinate movement when its visual commands conflict with the body’s physical reflexes? Movement is guided by visual commands from the brain, but the movement itself is managed by local, fast-acting reflex circuits (proprioceptive-motor reflex arcs) in the spinal cord (or the fly’s ventral nerve cord). Descending neurons convey the motor commands from the brain to the spinal cord and must interface with the spinal circuits to guide the movement appropriately. We study how this occurs in the fly equivalent of the spinal cord: the ventral nerve cord. Here local proprioceptive-motor reflex arcs control movement - how do descending commands from the brain interface with these reflex arcs? What happens when they come into conflict? We manipulate both proprioceptor and visual sensory inputs while recording from motor neurons and behavioral readouts to investigate how the motor system integrates and resolves conflicts between these two essential cues.
Embodying the connectome
An exciting development in Drosophila neurobiology is the recent release of multiple connectomes mapping every chemical synapse between every neuron in the fly nervous system. This allows a new scale of understanding of neural computation in the brain, but these maps are disconnected from the sensory inputs (proprioceptors) and motor outputs (muscles) in the fly's body. Our work bridges this gap for the head control system: we are functionally characterizing the proprioceptors and muscles that provide the input and output of the connectome. This will allow us to integrate the circuit understanding the connectome provides with knowledge of how it interacts with the outside world.
Neural basis of motor learning
Motor systems must adapt over time to changes in the body and environment. We are piloting studies to determine the neural basis of this motor adaptation, focusing specifically on how the Drosophila head control system refines its movements in response to altered sensory inputs.
Developing Genetic Reagents
Drosophila offers the opportunity to perturb single, identified neurons during behavior. To enable such experiments, we construct genetic lines that express in single neurons in the head control system.