Ring attractor dynamics in the Drosophila central brain

• Autores: Sung Soo Kim, Hervé Rouault, Shaul Druckmann
• Localización: Science, ISSN 0036-8075, Vol. 356, Nº 6340, 2017, págs. 849-853
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Ring attractors are a class of recurrent networks hypothesized to underlie the representation of heading direction. Such network structures, schematized as a ring of neurons whose connectivity depends on their heading preferences, can sustain a bump-like activity pattern whose location can be updated by continuous shifts along either turn direction. We recently reported that a population of fly neurons represents the animal’s heading via bump-like activity dynamics. We combined two-photon calcium imaging in head-fixed flying flies with optogenetics to overwrite the existing population representation with an artificial one, which was then maintained by the circuit with naturalistic dynamics. A network with local excitation and global inhibition enforces this unique and persistent heading representation. Ring attractor networks have long been invoked in theoretical work; our study provides physiological evidence of their existence and functional architecture.