[대학원 생명과학과 세미나 안내]
연사 : 김안모 교수 (한양대학교 생체공학과)
연제 : Object recognition in flying Drosophila
일시 : 2019년 10월 18일 (금) 오후 5시
장소 : 하나과학관 A동 B131호
초청교수 : 이은진 교수
Abstract
Flying Drosophila recognize various visual objects and steer their wings accordingly. Two of the best-known visuomotor behaviors are their aversion to a small spot and attraction to a long vertical bar. During such behaviors, its nervous system is required to compute distinct visual features of an object such as shape, position, velocity and etc. It remains to be studied, however, where and how these visual features are computed in the central brain. Using a genetic silencing technique in flying Drosophila and a calcium imaging method in conjunction with computational modeling, we studied a higher-order visual center consisting of ~20 discrete neuropils, termed optic glomeruli, to understand their role in visually-guided flight control. We performed a large-scale screening experiment in which we genetically silenced a subset of visual projection neurons innervating individual optic glomeruli. We identified several glomeruli that appear to be associated with wing responses to spot and bar stimuli. Subsequently, we applied the classical modeling approach of Reichardt and Poggio (1972) to separate motion- and position-dependent wing responses to a visual object, and thereby identified parallel neural pathways encoding distinct visual features. Taken together, this study uncovers a parallel visual computation that underlies how flying Drosophila recognize a visual object and act to initiate a rapid flight maneuver in midair.