Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system.

Vision provides animals with detailed information about their surroundings, conveying diverse features such as color, form, and movement across the visual scene. Computing these parallel spatial features requires a large and diverse network of neurons, such that in animals as distant as flies and humans, visual regions comprise half the brain's volume. These visual brain regions often reveal remarkable structure-function relationships, with neurons organized along spatial maps with shapes that directly relate to their roles in visual processing.

The connectome of the adult Drosophila mushroom body provides insights into function.

Making inferences about the computations performed by neuronal circuits from synapse-level connectivity maps is an emerging opportunity in neuroscience. The mushroom body (MB) is well positioned for developing and testing such an approach due to its conserved neuronal architecture, recently completed dense connectome, and extensive prior experimental studies of its roles in learning, memory, and activity regulation. Here, we identify new components of the MB circuit in , including extensive visual input and MB output neurons (MBONs) with direct connections to descending neurons.

Neural circuit mechanisms of sexual receptivity in Drosophila females.

Choosing a mate is one of the most consequential decisions a female will make during her lifetime. A female fly signals her willingness to mate by opening her vaginal plates, allowing a courting male to copulate. Vaginal plate opening (VPO) occurs in response to the male courtship song and is dependent on the mating status of the female.

Cell types and neuronal circuitry underlying female aggression in .

Aggressive social interactions are used to compete for limited resources and are regulated by complex sensory cues and the organism's internal state. While both sexes exhibit aggression, its neuronal underpinnings are understudied in females. Here, we identify a population of sexually dimorphic aIPg neurons in the adult central brain whose optogenetic activation increased, and genetic inactivation reduced, female aggression.

A connectome and analysis of the adult central brain.

The neural circuits responsible for animal behavior remain largely unknown. We summarize new methods and present the circuitry of a large fraction of the brain of the fruit fly . Improved methods include new procedures to prepare, image, align, segment, find synapses in, and proofread such large data sets.

Neural circuitry linking mating and egg laying in Drosophila females.

Mating and egg laying are tightly cooordinated events in the reproductive life of all oviparous females. Oviposition is typically rare in virgin females but is initiated after copulation. Here we identify the neural circuitry that links egg laying to mating status in Drosophila melanogaster.