Back to Search Start Over

Synaptic gradients transform object location to action

Authors :
Mark Dombrovski
Martin Y. Peek
Jin-Yong Park
Andrea Vaccari
Marissa Sumathipala
Carmen Morrow
Patrick Breads
Arthur Zhao
Yerbol Z. Kurmangaliyev
Piero Sanfilippo
Aadil Rehan
Jason Polsky
Shada Alghailani
Emily Tenshaw
Shigehiro Namiki
S. Lawrence Zipursky
Gwyneth M. Card
Source :
Nature, vol 613, iss 7944
Publication Year :
2023
Publisher :
Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2023.

Abstract

To survive, animals must convert sensory information into appropriate behaviours1,2. Vision is a common sense for locating ethologically relevant stimuli and guiding motor responses3–5. How circuitry converts object location in retinal coordinates to movement direction in body coordinates remains largely unknown. Here we show through behaviour, physiology, anatomy and connectomics in Drosophila that visuomotor transformation occurs by conversion of topographic maps formed by the dendrites of feature-detecting visual projection neurons (VPNs)6,7 into synaptic weight gradients of VPN outputs onto central brain neurons. We demonstrate how this gradient motif transforms the anteroposterior location of a visual looming stimulus into the fly’s directional escape. Specifically, we discover that two neurons postsynaptic to a looming-responsive VPN type promote opposite takeoff directions. Opposite synaptic weight gradients onto these neurons from looming VPNs in different visual field regions convert localized looming threats into correctly oriented escapes. For a second looming-responsive VPN type, we demonstrate graded responses along the dorsoventral axis. We show that this synaptic gradient motif generalizes across all 20 primary VPN cell types and most often arises without VPN axon topography. Synaptic gradients may thus be a general mechanism for conveying spatial features of sensory information into directed motor outputs.

Details

ISSN :
14764687 and 00280836
Volume :
613
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Nature
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....d7caa14092fa7eb44628d6fc439a0107