RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Manipulating neural dynamics to tune motion detection
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.11.02.466844
DO 10.1101/2021.11.02.466844
A1 Aneysis D. Gonzalez-Suarez
A1 Jacob A. Zavatone-Veth
A1 Juyue Chen
A1 Catherine A. Matulis
A1 Bara A. Badwan
A1 Damon A. Clark
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/03/2021.11.02.466844.abstract
AB Neurons integrate excitatory and inhibitory signals to produce their outputs, but the role of input timing in this integration remains poorly understood. Motion detection is a paradigmatic example of this integration, since theories of motion detection rely on different delays in visual signals. These delays allow circuits to compare scenes at different times to calculate the direction and speed of motion. It remains untested how response dynamics of individual cell types drive motion detection and velocity sensitivity. Here, we sped up or slowed down specific neuron types in Drosophila’s motion detection circuit by manipulating ion channel expression. Altering the dynamics of individual neurons upstream of motion detectors changed their integrating properties and increased their sensitivity to fast or slow visual motion, exposing distinct roles for dynamics in tuning directional signals. A circuit model constrained by data and anatomy reproduced the observed tuning changes. Together, these results reveal how excitatory and inhibitory dynamics jointly tune a canonical circuit computation.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.