Transforming representations of movement from body- to world-centric space

Dec 16, 2021Nature

Changing movement signals from a body-centered to a world-centered perspective

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Abstract

Drosophila melanogaster contains two distinct cell types, PFNd and PFNv, that may encode translational velocity and heading during movement.

PFNd neurons are preferentially activated during forward-ipsilateral movement, while PFNv neurons are activated during backward-contralateral movement.
Perturbing PFNd neurons can disrupt the ability of walking flies to integrate their path based on internal signals.
The connectivity pattern of PFNd and PFNv neurons converges onto hΔB neurons, which pools heading and translation direction information.
hΔB neurons are associated with forming a representation of translational velocity in world-centric coordinates.
Integrating this world-centric representation over time could enable the brain to maintain a working memory of the traveled path.

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When an animal moves through the world, its brain receives a stream of information about the body's translational velocity from motor commands and sensory feedback signals. These incoming signals are referenced to the body, but ultimately, they must be transformed into world-centric coordinates for navigation. Here we show that this computation occurs in the fan-shaped body in the brain of Drosophila melanogaster. We identify two cell types, PFNd and PFNv, that conjunctively encode translational velocity and heading as a fly walks. In these cells, velocity signals are acquired from locomotor brain regionsand are multiplied with heading signals from the compass system. PFNd neurons prefer forward-ipsilateral movement, whereas PFNv neurons prefer backward-contralateral movement, and perturbing PFNd neurons disrupts idiothetic path integration in walking flies. Downstream, PFNd and PFNv neurons converge onto hΔB neurons, with a connectivity pattern that pools together heading and translation direction combinations corresponding to the same movement in world-centric space. This network motif effectively performs a rotation of the brain's representation of body-centric translational velocity according to the current heading direction. Consistent with our predictions, we observe that hΔB neurons form a representation of translational velocity in world-centric coordinates. By integrating this representation over time, it should be possible for the brain to form a working memory of the path travelled through the environment. 1,2 3-5 6 7 8-10

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Abstract

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