Processing of figure and background motion in the visual system of the fly

Reichardt, Werner; Egelhaaf, Martin; Guo, Aike

doi:10.1007/bf00200799

Cited by 51 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…It is known that flies can discriminate prominent foreground objects from the visual background (Reichardt and Poggio, 1979;Egelhaaf, 1985;Reichardt et al, 1989) and tend to fixate large, vertical stripes in the foreground (Götz, 1980;Götz, 1987). For this reason, we tested our flies with combinations of foreground and background rotations during saccades, and found that none of these manipulations had any significant effect.…”

Section: On the Role Of Visual Feedback During Flightmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparison of visual and haltere-mediated feedback in the control of body saccades inDrosophila melanogaster

Bender

Dickinson

2006

Journal of Experimental Biology

118

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SUMMARY The flight trajectories of fruit flies consist of straight flight segments interspersed with rapid turns called body saccades. Although the saccades are stereotyped, it is not known whether their brief time course is due to a feed-forward (predetermined) motor program or due to feedback from sensory systems that are reflexively activated by the rapid rotation. Two sensory modalities, the visual system and the mechanosensory halteres, are likely sources of such feedback because they are sensitive to angular velocities within the range experienced during saccades. Utilizing a magnetic tether in which flies are fixed in space but free to rotate about their yaw axis, we systematically manipulated the feedback from the visual and haltere systems to test their role in determining the time course of body saccades. We found that altering visual feedback had no significant effect on the dynamics of saccades, whereas increasing and decreasing the amount of haltere-mediated feedback decreased and increased saccade amplitude, respectively. In other experiments, we altered the aerodynamic surface of the wings such that the flies had to actively modify their wing-stroke kinematics to maintain straight flight on the magnetic tether. Flies exhibit such modification, but the control is compromised in the dark, indicating that the visual system does provide feedback for flight stability at lower angular velocities, to which the haltere system is less sensitive. Cutting the wing surface disrupted the time course of the saccades, indicating that although flies employ sensory feedback to modulate saccade dynamics, it is not precise or fast enough to compensate for large changes in wing efficacy.

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Section: On the Role Of Visual Feedback During Flightmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparison of visual and haltere-mediated feedback in the control of body saccades inDrosophila melanogaster

Bender

Dickinson

2006

Journal of Experimental Biology

118

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“…Consequently, the turning responses were concluded to be mediated mainly by the object detection system. On the level of the lobula plate the object detection system is supposed to be represented by the FD-cells (Egelhaaf 1985a, b, c;Egelhaaf et al 1988;Reichardt et al 1989). In the behavioural experiments of Kimmerle et al (1997), the object was positioned in the most sensitive part of the FD1b-cell's receptive ®eld.…”

Section: Identi®cation Of Cellsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…FD-cells are output elements of the lobula plate and project into the lateral protocerebrum where they probably synapse on descending neurons. FD-cells have been suggested to play a crucial role in mediating object-directed turning responses (Egelhaaf 1985a,b,c;Egelhaaf et al 1988;Reichardt et al 1989;Hausen and Wehrhahn 1990). It has been suggested recently that, in addition to the FD-cells described by Egelhaaf (1985b), further types of¯y TCs exist which also exhibit small-®eld-tuning (Gauck and Borst 1999).…”

Section: Introductioǹmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of object motion by a fly neuron during simulated flight

Kimmerle

Egelhaaf

2000

Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Sensory, Neural, and Behav

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“…There is now good evidence that two parallel control systems are involved which differ in their sensitivity to the size of the moving stimulus (Geiger and N/issel 1982;G6tz 1983a;Heisenberg and Wolf 1984;Egelhaaf 1985a-c;Bausenwein et al 1986;Egelhaaf et al 1988;Egelhaaf 1989;Reichardt et al 1989;Hausen and Wehrhahn 1990). In the housefly Musca and blowfly Calliphora, the control system that mediates compensatory optomotor turning reactions ("large-field system") responds best to extended binocular stimulus patterns rotating around roughly the vertical axis of the animal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the coordination of motor output during visual flight control of flies

1991

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Summary. In tethered flying houseflies (Musca domestica), the yaw torque produced by the wings is accompanied by postural changes of the abdomen and hindlegs. In free flight, these body movements would jointly lead to turning manoeuvres of the animal. By recording the yaw torque together with the lateral deflections of either the abdomen or the hindlegs, it is shown that these motor output systems act in a highly synergistic way during two types of visual orientation behavior, compensatory optomotor turning reactions and orientation turns elicited by moving objects. This high degree of coordination is particularly conspicuous for the pathway activated by moving objects. Here, orientation responses either may be induced or may fail to be generated always simultaneously in all three motor output systems. This suggests that the pathway mediating orientation turns towards objects is gated before it segregates into the respective motor control systems of the wings, the abdomen and the hindlegs.

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Processing of figure and background motion in the visual system of the fly

Cited by 51 publications

References 74 publications

A comparison of visual and haltere-mediated feedback in the control of body saccades inDrosophila melanogaster

A comparison of visual and haltere-mediated feedback in the control of body saccades inDrosophila melanogaster

Detection of object motion by a fly neuron during simulated flight

On the coordination of motor output during visual flight control of flies

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