In other words, desert ants (#Cataglyphis) and bees are famous for exploring a landscape and then returning in a straight line to the nest – but this ability may be present in all insects, if it is present even in the humble Drosophila.
“Origin of wiring specificity in an olfactory map revealed by neuron type–specific, time-lapse imaging of dendrite targeting”, by Wong et al. 2023 (Liqun Luo’s lab). https://elifesciences.org/articles/85521
"A leaky integrate-and-fire computational model based on the connectome of the entire adult Drosophila brain reveals insights into sensorimotor processing", by Shiu et al. 2023, from Kristin Scott's lab https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.02.539144v1.full
"Our results demonstrate that modeling brain circuits purely from connectivity and predicted neurotransmitter identity generates experimentally testable hypotheses and can accurately describe complete sensorimotor transformations."
There are useful bots like, for me, @flypapers – I wish I could filter for neuro-only papers, but the volume isn't high. Then there're neuroscience-specific servers like synapse.cafe and neuromatch.social – their local timelines may reveal further accounts you may like.
“Generative network modeling reveals quantitative definitions of bilateral symmetry exhibited by a whole insect brain connectome”, Pedigo et al. 2023 https://elifesciences.org/articles/83739
“This important work demonstrates a significant asymmetry between the connectivity statistics of the left and right hemispheres of the Drosophila larva brain. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling and represents a first step toward the development of statistical tests for comparing pairs of connectomes more generally.”
Congrats to co-first authors Michael Winding and Benjamin Pedigo, and to all our lab members and collaborators who made this work possible over the years. A journey that started over 10 years ago–and yet this is but a new beginning. So much more to come.
Intro: I'm a #Biology professor researching the #Neurogenetics of #learning and #memory in #Drosophila. I study how operant or motor memories are formed and how other forms of learning regulate these processes. As spontaneous behavior is required for operant learning, I also study how #spontaneity arises in nervous systems.