Active vision shapes and coordinates flight motor responses in flies
Abstract
Many animals, including humans, move their eyes, head, and/or body to stabilize visual gaze. Revealing how the nervous system relays visual information to control the eyes, head, and/or body together is critical to understanding gaze stabilization. Here, we studied how tethered, flying fruit flies combine head movements and wing steering efforts to stabilize gaze. By combining experimental and theoretical approaches we show that head movements shape visual information, which in turn increases the strength of wing steering responses. Moreover, head movements preceded and coordinated downstream wing steering responses, establishing a temporal order. Taken together, head movements and their influence on visual inputs must be considered to fully appreciate the potential of visual information processing for flight control.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1920846117
Entities
People
- Benjamin Cellini
- Jean-Michel Mongeau
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Pennsylvania State University