Flexible neural control of transition points within the egg-laying behavioral sequence in Drosophila.

Innate behaviors are frequently comprised of ordered sequences of component actions that progress to satisfy essential drives. Progression is governed by specialized sensory cues that induce transitions between components within the appropriate context. Here we have characterized the structure of the egg-laying behavioral sequence in Drosophila and found significant variability in the transitions between component actions that affords the organism an adaptive flexibility.

A short guide to insect oviposition: when, where and how to lay an egg.

Egg-laying behavior is one of the most important aspects of female behavior, and has a profound impact on the fitness of a species. As such, it is controlled by several layers of regulation. Here, we review recent advances in our understanding of insect neural circuits that control when, where and how to lay an egg.

DeepLabCut: markerless pose estimation of user-defined body parts with deep learning.

Quantifying behavior is crucial for many applications in neuroscience. Videography provides easy methods for the observation and recording of animal behavior in diverse settings, yet extracting particular aspects of a behavior for further analysis can be highly time consuming. In motor control studies, humans or other animals are often marked with reflective markers to assist with computer-based tracking, but markers are intrusive, and the number and location of the markers must be determined a priori.

Robust odor coding via inhalation-coupled transient activity in the mammalian olfactory bulb.

It has been proposed that a single sniff generates a "snapshot" of the olfactory world. However, odor coding on this timescale is poorly understood, and it is not known whether coding is invariant to changes in respiration frequency. We investigated this by recording spike trains from the olfactory bulb in awake, behaving rats.