Figure 1. Anatomy suggests a potential circuit mechanism to update a compass representation.
(A) Schematic of the fly brain. Highlighted in green are the ellipsoid body (EB), protocerebral bridge (PB), and the paired gall and noduli (NO). (B) (Left) Schematic of the morphology of two E-PG neurons innervating different sides of the protocerebral bridge. The probable direction of information flow is from their predominantly spiny arbors in the ellipsoid body (‘E-’) to their predominantly bouton-like projections in the protocerebral bridge and gall (‘-PG’). (Right) A single GFP-labeled E-PG neuron. Scale bar: 10 µm. (C) Schematic of the head-fixed walking fly preparation used for two-photon calcium imaging and single cell electrophysiology. (D) For a given two-photon imaged volume (Left, maximum intensity projection of the ellipsoid body), the population vector average (PVA, brown arrow, Center) for a given time point is computed by summing vectors representing the instantaneous calcium activity of each sector of the ellipsoid body (for example, the dotted red arrows shown here for a few sectors). Each sector is a 22.5o slice of the ellipsoid body, defined manually, and each sector’s vector points radially outward along its half angle. PVA strength is the normalized amplitude of the summed vector. (E) (Top) E-PG calcium activity (blue) in the ellipsoid body as the fly turns in darkness. The 16 ellipsoid body sectors are shown unwrapped from –π to π. The PVA is shown in brown, PVA strength is at the top. (Bottom) Comparison of the fly’s heading (black) with the PVA shows a tight correlation of the two, albeit with some drift. This example shows a trial in which the PVA closely matches the heading. We also observed larger, low frequency shifts between the two, as reported previously (Seelig and Jayaraman, 2015). (F) (Left) Schematic of the morphology of two P-EN neurons innervating different sides of the protocerebral bridge. P-EN neurons arborizing in the same protocerebral bridge glomeruli as their E-PG counterparts send processes to offset (neighboring) sectors of the ellipsoid body. Processes in the protocerebral bridge are overwhelmingly spiny and likely dendritic (Wolff et al., 2015). Processes in the ellipsoid body and noduli are predominantly bouton-like and suggestive of presynaptic specializations. (Right) A single GFP labeled P-EN neuron. Scale bar: 10 µm. (G) (Top left) GFP-labeled E-PG neurons in the R60D05 Gal4 line (maximum intensity projection, reproduced with permission from Janelia FlyLight Image Database (Jenett et al., 2012). (Top right) GFP-labeled P-EN neurons in the R37F06 Gal4 line (maximum intensity projection reproduced from Janelia FlyLight Image Database [Jenett et al., 2012]). (Middle left) Ellipsoid body to protocerebral bridge connectivity map for E-PG neurons. Single neurons that arborize in one wedge of the ellipsoid body arborize in the glomerulus of the same color and shading in the bridge. Arborizations in the gall do not exhibit a stereotyped pattern. (Middle right). Protocerebral bridge to ellipsoid body connectivity map for P-EN neurons. Single neurons that arborize in one glomerulus in the bridge arborize in the ellipsoid body tile with the corresponding color. Arborizations in the noduli do not exhibit stereotyped patterns. (Bottom) Single E-PG and P-EN neurons that arborize in the same protocerebral bridge glomerulus have non-overlapping processes in the ellipsoid body with a stereotyped angular shift between the two. All scale bars are 50 µm. (H) Overview of an anatomically motivated mechanism to update a heading representation. E-PG neurons are assumed to make excitatory connections onto P-EN neurons in the protocerebral bridge. P-EN neurons, in turn, are assumed to make excitatory connections onto E-PG neurons in the ellipsoid body. A bump of activity in E-PG neurons (dark blue) represents the fly’s heading in the ellipsoid body. This bump of activity would result in two bumps of E-PG activity in the protocerebral bridge, one on either side. If the two sides of the bridge were to receive asymmetric input dependent on the fly’s angular velocity and turning direction, P-EN neurons with dendrites in the bridge columns that also receive E-PG input would be activated. The anatomical shift between the P-EN and E-PG neurons in the ellipsoid body (compare B and F) would then cause the P-EN neurons to excite E-PG neurons nearby, shifting the E-PG activity bump and updating the heading representation. Note also that the mirror-symmetric activation of the two sides of the bridge would also be visible in activity differences in the noduli (see F and Figure 2A), each of which only receives P-EN projections from the opposite side of the brain.