Flight of the Navigator: Ring Attractor Dynamics in the Drosophila Central Brain

Jim Gorman from the New York Times interviews Vivek Jayaraman at Janelia Research Campus, USA. 

Watch as Vivek talks us through how researchers in his lab are exploring how the brain encodes locomotion, orientation and movement in real-time walking and flying fruit flies. 

The group expresses a calcium indicator in specific neurons in a doughnut-ring structure in the fly brain that seemingly encodes location in fly brains, enabling them to orientate in space. Using 2-Photon laser microscopy they can then image the activity of the neurons as the flies explore on foot and in flight.

Reference:

Kim, S., Rouault, H., Druckmann, S. and Jayaraman, V. (2017). Ring attractor dynamics in the Drosophila central brain. Science, p.eaal4835.