Our findings in females build on the incredible work from @ceschretter.bsky.social on aIPg cells.

Also big s/o to the team @hhmijanelia.bsky.social and the Lab of @jefferis.bsky.social for generating the male brain #connectome dataset. Such an amazing resource and it was a pleasure to dig into.

I could go on with new behavioral, ephys, and modeling data, but I encourage folks to check it out!

Big takeaway is adaptive control in the #drosophila pursuit system emerges from two parallel pathways with specialized roles and different control gain/logic. These pathways are key in both sexes.

(3) We then show that female AOTU neurons are similar to their male counterparts, in terms of their LC10a connections and visual receptive field properties. These results argue that the core visual pursuit circuit has similar physiological properties in both sexes.

(2) We show that optostimulation of "arousal neurons" in females (i.e., aIPg cells) drives visual pursuit and preferentially depolarizes AOTU019. Previously, we had shown that the same is true in aroused males (i.e., P1 optostimulation).

To highlight just a few of the newest features:

(1) With the new male connectome, we were able to perform comparative analyses of AOTU cells in males and females. We showed that, in both sexes, AOTU019 and AOTU025 are the key links between visual input (LC10a) and pre-motor outputs (DNs).

Congratulations Sven! Looking forward to having your lab just across the river!

Like c'mon this is both accurate and comedic gold.

There is so much to learn from this dataset that it's overwhelming. It feels amazing to connect everything, from the "cognitive" regions of the brain all the way down to muscles, internal organs, and endocrine systems. With the analyses in our preprint, we've only just scratched the surface.

Congratulations! This is such an awesome resource.

I am living for this electricity animation.

Our data support an architecture of distributed, parallelized, and embodied control, reminiscent of “subsumption architectures” from autonomous robotics, where behavior-centric feedback loops are organized s that they can be combined or subsumed to generate complex or resolve competing behaviors.