A Sense Of Direction In Insects

As sailors use constellations, wind direction, and current to determine their heading, so, too, do animals process diverse sensory information to set their course. Via this sensory processing, the animal’s brain develops a sense of direction, a prerequisite for navigating between points. To understand how the sense of direction is generated in the brain, we interrogate neurons in the brain of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. With numerous tools that allow observing the neural network structures and activities and perturbing them, we begin to understand how the brain transforms sensory information into a sense of direction. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 39332]