ramdya.bsky.social
ramdya.bsky.social
@ramdya.bsky.social
My TEDx talk just came out!

“How flies can help us build better robots and AI”
youtube.com/watch?v=kFV6...

Thanks again to the fantastic organizers at TEDxArendal

Special thanks to the people in my laboratory at EPFL past and present without whom none of this would be possible
youtube.com
February 24, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
3-2/ EVEN without antennae, the coordination between head rotations and foreleg movements remains! 😱😱😱
December 18, 2024 at 5:10 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
3-1/ Or, head-immobilized flies will still move their antennae and forelegs in a fascinatingly coordinated fashion. 🤯
December 18, 2024 at 5:08 PM
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3/ Surprisingly, each body part operates independently of the others' sensory feedback. Even with amputated forelegs, flies still move their antennae and head! This suggests an open-loop (not feedback-based) coordination mechanism. 🤖
December 18, 2024 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
10/ Big thanks to our amazing collaborators and the incredible fly community for creating the open-source tools that made this work possible. 🙌 #Neuroscience #MotorControl #Drosophila #Connectome @neuroxepfl.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social @flywire.bsky.social
December 18, 2024 at 5:20 PM
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9/ So next time you see a fly grooming itself or you try multitasking, take a moment to appreciate the magic of coordination. Check out our preprint! 🪰🧠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Centralized brain networks underlie body part coordination during grooming
Animals must coordinate multiple body parts to perform important tasks such as grooming, or locomotion. How this movement synchronization is achieved by the nervous system remains largely unknown. Her...
www.biorxiv.org
December 18, 2024 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
8/ The fly’s strategy enables robustness yet flexibility, thus it may be a common blueprint for movement across species—or even for other behaviors in flies. 🐁🐱🦎
December 18, 2024 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
7/ Recurrent excitation: Drives non-groomed antennal pitch movements and keeps other motor networks in sync. ⚡️
Broadcast inhibition: Suppresses targeted antennal movement to prevent conflicting actions. ⛔️
December 18, 2024 at 5:16 PM
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6/ To understand this better, we simulated the grooming network and ran a computational neural activation screen. Two key circuit motifs emerged as the stars of this coordination process:
December 18, 2024 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
5/ Think of it as an elegant engineering solution: these central neurons enable flexibility, allowing any brain region to initiate or stop the behavior. 🛠️
December 18, 2024 at 5:13 PM
Here, once again, we were granted unprecedented access to neural architectures by having the full fly brain connectome at our fingertips...
4/ So, what orchestrates these movements? Using the fly connectome, we constructed a subnetwork for antennal grooming. In this network, we discovered that a central group of neurons links motor circuits for the neck, antennae, and forelegs. 🧠 These neurons act as a hub for coordinating body parts.
December 18, 2024 at 6:29 PM
ghost grooming! (perhaps more appropriate for halloween 👻)
3-2/ EVEN without antennae, the coordination between head rotations and foreleg movements remains! 😱😱😱
December 18, 2024 at 6:28 PM
This is really a beautiful demonstration of one of the important opportunities provided by realistic biomechanical models - inference of contact forces and selective manipulation of individual joint degrees of freedom!
2/ By simulating these motions in a biomechanical model, we discovered the reason: synchronization ensures forceful and unobstructed interactions between the forelegs and antennae. This efficiency guarantees a thorough cleaning job. 💪✨
December 18, 2024 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
2/ By simulating these motions in a biomechanical model, we discovered the reason: synchronization ensures forceful and unobstructed interactions between the forelegs and antennae. This efficiency guarantees a thorough cleaning job. 💪✨
December 18, 2024 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
1/ In our study, we explored how flies synchronize their head, antennae, and forelegs during goal-directed antennal grooming. We found that when targeting an antenna, flies perform three distinct motor actions. But why these specific movements?
December 18, 2024 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by ramdya.bsky.social
🧵 Ever seen a fly perform a full self-care ritual? 🪰 They meticulously rub their head and clean their antennae, ensuring every speck of dirt is gone. But how do they coordinate all those tiny body parts so seamlessly?👇
December 18, 2024 at 5:01 PM
As you unwrap your holiday presents, consider how you coordinate your fingers and limbs.
@gzmozd.bsky.social identified fly brain networks for body part coordination through experiments, biomechanical modeling, connectomics, and neural network simulations ! 🤖
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
December 18, 2024 at 11:03 AM
Being raised alone makes flies afraid of one another! 🪰
But exposure to other flies makes them become sociable. We found and recorded specific learning circuits in the brain that regulate this transition. Read more in our new preprint:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 26, 2024 at 8:49 AM
Now published in Nature Methods:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We're excited to present NeuroMechFly v2, a neuromechanical simulation of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, for exploring artificial neural networks (including connectome-driven models) controlling behavior.

www.neuromechfly.org
November 12, 2024 at 12:34 PM
The EPFL School of Life Sciences is hiring in the very broad area of Life Science Engineering.
www.epfl.ch/about/workin...
This a topically highly broad search. A rare opportunity.
Come be my colleague!
November 14, 2023 at 10:32 PM
We're excited to present

"NeuroMechFly 2.0, a framework for simulating embodied sensorimotor control in adult Drosophila"

biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In which we make our digital fly see, smell, adhere, and navigate challenging terrain
September 19, 2023 at 5:44 PM
Cross posting a new paper from the lab
"Networks of descending neurons transform command-like signals into population-based behavioral control"
x.com/jonasfbraun/...
September 19, 2023 at 5:36 PM