Visual control of orientation behaviour in the fly: Part I. A quantitative analysis

Abstract

An understanding of sensory information processing in the nervous system will probably require investigations with a variety of ‘model’ systems at different levels of complexity.Our choice of a suitable model system was constrained by two conflicting requirements: on one hand the information processing properties of the system should be rather complex, on the other hand the system should be amenable to a quantitative analysis. In this sense the fly represents a compromise.In these two papers we explore how optical information is processed by the fly's visual system. Our objective is to unravel the logical organization of the fly's visual system and its underlying functional and computational principles. Our approach is at a highly integrative level. There are different levels of analysing and ‘understanding’ complex systems, like a brain or a sophisticated computer.

Visual afferences to flight steering muscles controlling optomotor responses of the fly

“…Behavioral response components as expressed in free (Land and Collett 1974;Collett 1980a, b;Wehrhahn etal. 1982;Wagner 1986a, b) and tethered flight (Reichardt and Poggio 1976;Reichardt et al 1983;Reichardt 1986;tteisenberg and Wolf 1984;Wehrhahn 1985;Egelhaaf et al 1988) were studied, as well as the response properties of visual interneurons (Hausen 1984;Egelhaaf et al 1988;Hausen and Egelhaaf 1989). Moreover, there are various studies concentrating on motor and mechanical aspects of flight control in flies (for review see Nachtigall 1983).…”

On the performance of biological movement detectors and ideal velocity sensors in the context of optomotor course stabilization

“…The mean luminance was 44 cd0m 2 , the contrast 0.92. As in previous studies (Reichardt & Poggio, 1976;Heisenberg & Wolf, 1984), the velocity of image motion was controlled in such a way that it was proportional to the fly's yaw torque. This was achieved by sampling the torque signal by a 12-bit analogto-digital converter of an I0O-card (DT 2801 A, Data Translation, Marlboro, MA) and by calculating the corresponding displacement of the visual surround.…”

Neuronal Encoding of Visual Motion in Real-Time

“…Reichardt and Poggio 1976;Egelhaaf et al 1988;Hausen and Egelhaaf 1989;Bialek and Rieke 1992;Egelhaaf and Borst 1993a;Egelhaaf and Warzecha 1999). Visually guided flight manoeuvres of these insects can be investigated in free flight or with a flight simulator under the well controlled laboratory conditions of tethered flight.…”

“…One of the most virtuosic visually controlled manoeuvres of flies is the chasing behaviour during which male flies chase potential mates in order to catch and finally mate with them (Land and Collett 1974;Wagner 1986a). Other well studied behavioural routines that are controlled visually include the detection of objects on the basis of relative motion between the object and its background (Virsik and Reichardt 1976;Reichardt et al 1983;Heisenberg and Wolf 1984;Egelhaaf et al 1988;Götz 1991;Egelhaaf and Borst 1993a;Kimmerle et al 1996;Kimmerle et al 1997) and the ability to stabilize the flight path against disturbances by compensatory optomotor reactions (Götz 1968;Götz 1975;Reichardt and Poggio 1976;Heisenberg and Wolf 1984;Egelhaaf et al 1988;Egelhaaf and Borst 1993a;Warzecha and Egelhaaf 1996).…”