"Many animals rely on an internal heading representation when navigating in varied environments. How this representation is linked to the sensory cues that define different surroundings is unclear. In the fly brain, heading is represented by ‘compass’ neurons that innervate a ring-shaped structure known as the ellipsoid body. Each compass neuron receives inputs from ‘ring’ neurons that are selective for particular visual features; this combination provides an ideal substrate for the extraction of directional information from a visual scene. Here we combine two-photon calcium imaging and optogenetics in tethered flying flies with circuit modelling, and show how the correlated activity of compass and visual neurons drives plasticity, which flexibly transforms two-dimensional visual cues into a stable heading representation. ... " See the supplementary information for model details.
Model Type: Connectionist Network
Region(s) or Organism(s): Drosophila
Cell Type(s): Abstract rate-based neuron
Model Concept(s): Spatial Navigation; Synaptic Plasticity; Hebbian plasticity; Attractor Neural Network
Simulation Environment: MATLAB
Implementer(s): Kim, Sung Soo [sungsoo at ucsb.edu]
References:
Kim SS, Hermundstad AM, Romani S, Abbott LF, Jayaraman V. (2019). Generation of stable heading representations in diverse visual scenes. Nature. 576 [PubMed]