The role of a population of descending neurons in the optomotor response in flying Drosophila

To maintain stable flight, animals continuously perform trimming adjustments to compensate for internal and external perturbations. Whereas animals use many different sensory modalities to detect such perturbations, insects rely extensively on optic flow to modify their motor output and remain on course. We studied this behavior in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, by exploiting the optomotor response, a robust reflex in which an animal steers so as to minimize the magnitude of rotatory optic flow it perceives. Whereas the behavioral and algorithmic structure of the optomotor response has been studied in great detail, its neural implementation is not well-understood. In this paper, we present findings implicating a group of nearly homomorphic descending neurons, the DNg02s, as a core component for the optomotor response in flying Drosophila. Prior work on these cells suggested that they regulate the mechanical power to the flight system, presumably via connections to asynchronous flight motor neurons in the ventral nerve cord. When we chronically inactivated these cells, we observed that the magnitude of the optomotor response was diminished in proportion to the number of cells silenced, suggesting that the cells also regulate bilaterally asymmetric steering responses via population coding. During an optomotor response, flies coordinate changes in wing motion with movements of their head, abdomen, and hind legs, which are also diminished when the DNg02 cells are silenced. Using two-photon functional imaging, we show that the DNg02 cells respond most strongly to patterns of horizontal motion and that neuronal activity is closely correlated to motor output. However, unilateral optogenetic activation of DNg02 neurons does not elicit the asymmetric changes in wing motion characteristic of the optomotor response to a visual stimulus, but rather generates bilaterally symmetric increases in wingbeat amplitude. We interpret our experiments to suggest that flight maneuvers in flies require a more nuanced coordination of power muscles and steering muscles than previously appreciated, and that the physical flight apparatus of a fly might permit mechanical power to be distributed differentially between the two wings. Thus, whereas our experiments identify the DNg02 cells as a critical component of the optomotor reflex, our results suggest that other classes of descending cells targeting the steering muscle motor neurons are also required for the behavior.