A system of insect neurons sensitive to horizontal and vertical image motion connects the medulla and midbrain

Visual position stabilization in the hummingbird hawk moth, Macroglossum stellatarum L. II. Electrophysiological analysis of neurons sensitive to wide-field image motion

“…In Macroglossum the local motion signals obviously are not linearly summated, since the responses of the recorded neurons do not increase linearly with increasing pattern size but approach a saturation level. This feature is reminiscent of neurons in the medulla of a butter¯y (Ibbotson et al 1991), in the lobula plate of a¯y (Hausen 1982;Hengstenberg 1982;Egelhaaf 1985;Haag et al 1992), and in the ventral nerve cord of a dragon¯y (Olberg 1981a). With respect to the interaction of the signals from both eyes, the response to bilateral motion may be achieved by linear superposition of the signals followed by a saturation non-linearity which a ects the signals in particular during strong stimulation.…”

“…In the lobula complex a relatively small number of socalled tangential cells spatially pool the output of local elements by their extended dendritic arborizations (Strausfeld 1970;Strausfeld and Blest 1970;Wicklein 1994). Wide-®eld elements like the tangential cells in thē y lobula plate (reviews : Hausen 1981;Hausen and Egelhaaf 1989) and those in the medulla of moths (Milde 1993) and butter¯ies (Ibbotson et al 1991) are thought to play a major role in computing motion information for optomotor course control. Eventually, the output information of the lobula complex is passed by descending neurons through the cervical connectives into the thoracic ganglia.…”

Systematic analysis of the visual projection neurons ofDrosophila melanogaster. I. Lobula-specific pathways

“…Although VPNs have been described in various insect species (Strausfeld, 1991(Strausfeld, , 1976Strausfeld and Hausen, 1977;Fischbach and Dittrich, 1989;Hausen and Egelhaaf, 1989;Ibbotson et al, 1991;Meinertzhagen and Hanson, 1993;Milde, 1993;Wicklein and Strausfeld, 2000;Haag and Borst, 2001;Loesel and Homberg, 2001;Douglass and Strausfeld, 2003), information about the detailed 3D morphology of the VPNs is scarce.…”

“…The VPNs should convey such information to higher visual centers in the central brain. For example, electrophysiological and Ca 2ϩ dynamics imaging analyses of the brains of the butterfly Papilio aegeus, moth Manduca sexta, house fly Musca domestica, and the blowfly Calliphora erythrocephala showed that certain VPNs deriving from medulla and lobula plate respond only to motion of distinct angles (Ibbotson et al, 1991;Gilbert and Strausfeld, 1992;Milde, 1993;Strausfeld et al, 1995;Douglass and Strausfeld, 1996;Krapp and Hengstenberg, 1996;Single and Borst, 1998;Egelhaaf and Warzecha, 1999;Krapp et al, 2001;Haag and Borst, 2004;Kalb et al, 2004). VPNs are also involved in various other kinds of visual processing such as the detection of looming or receding objects (Wicklein and Strausfeld, 2000) and polarized light (Homberg and Wü rden, 1997; Loesel and Homberg, 2001) as well as the control of the circadian rhythm (Renn et al, 1999).…”

A Conserved Network for Control of Arthropod Exteroceptive Optical Flow Reflexes during Locomotion

“…Our goal in the present experiments is to evaluate a neuronal circuit controller which will use optical flow to control both walking and flight. Neurophysiological studies have identified direction-sensitive sensory neurons in the optic nerve of crayfish [22] and in the visual systems of various flying insects (in locust: [23]; in honeybee: [24]; in butterfly: [25]; in hawk moth: [26]; in fly: [27]). The sensor we will use for transduction of optical flow is an analog optical flow chip.…”