Publications by authors named "Suguru Takagi"
Article Synopsis
- The study examines how the Drosophila sechellia, a fruit-fly species that specializes in Morinda citrifolia (noni fruit), has evolved to have more olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) compared to its relative, D. melanogaster.
- Researchers found that the increase in OSNs enhances the ability to track noni odors more effectively, despite not improving the sensitivity of the projection neurons corresponding to those OSNs.
- The findings suggest that while more sensory neurons can help in odor detection, they actually lead to reduced adaptation of projection neurons, indicating a complex relationship between neuron quantity and sensory processing.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers studied how certain sensory neurons that detect important environmental cues have expanded in some species, particularly focusing on a fruit specialist and its close relative.
- They discovered that increased populations of noni fruit-detecting olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) enhance the ability to track the noni odor, leading to more consistent behavior regarding the fruit.
- Despite having more OSNs, there isn't a higher sensitivity in their projection neuron partners; instead, the increased sensory pooling seems to reduce adaptation due to weakened lateral inhibition.
Behavior can vary greatly even between genetically identical animals, but what determines such individuality? New work reveals that inter-individual differences in wiring of visual interneurons in Drosophila, arising from stochastic developmental events, underlie fly-specific object orientation abilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvertebrate species have significantly contributed to neuroscience owing to the accessibility they provide to cellular- and molecular-level understanding of brain functions. Somatotopic action selection is one of the key features of animal behavior, and studying this process in invertebrates is potentially a sweet spot in understanding the general relationship between neuronal morphology, circuit structure, and animal behavior. In this review, we introduce circuit architectures that realize somatotopic action selection, from simple reflexes to patterned motor outputs, in different invertebrate species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimals adaptively respond to a tactile stimulus by choosing an ethologically relevant behavior depending on the location of the stimuli. Here, we investigate how somatosensory inputs on different body segments are linked to distinct motor outputs in Drosophila larvae. Larvae escape by backward locomotion when touched on the head, while they crawl forward when touched on the tail.
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