BEHIND THE FLY
Citations & Credits
Created by Amy Sterling withAlex Bates & Yijie Yin
Seeing the threat
Visual projection neurons
A looming shadow is detected in the optic lobe, not by the descending neurons that command the escape. These lobula types carry that feature detection from the eye to the central brain. Counts are cells carrying each type label in BANC v888, across both hemispheres.
- LPLC2150 cellsLoom-selective
Selective for expanding, looming objects through radial motion opponency, and a major input to the giant-fibre escape pathway.
Klapoetke et al., Nature 2017 - LC499 cellsAngular velocity
Signals the angular speed of an approaching edge. LC4 and LPLC2 give the giant fibre complementary reads of a looming object, roughly speed alongside size.
von Reyn et al., Nature Neuroscience 2017; Ache et al., Current Biology 2019 - LPLC197 cellsLoom-responsive
Responds to expanding stimuli. Less fully characterised than LPLC2, and listed here for completeness rather than as an established escape trigger.
Wu et al., eLife 2016 - LC694 cellsLoom-responsive
Optogenetic activation drives escape-like behaviour, placing it in the looming-to-escape group.
Wu et al., eLife 2016 - LC11121 cellsSmall-object motion
Tuned to small moving objects rather than to expansion, so it reports a different visual feature than the looming types above.
Keleş & Frye, Current Biology 2017; Wu et al., eLife 2016 - LC16177 cellsExpansion, avoidance
Responds to expanding dark stimuli, and its activation is associated with backward walking and avoidance turning rather than takeoff.
Wu et al., eLife 2016
Detection and response are kept separate throughout this project. The descending neurons shown elsewhere in the experience produce an escape; they do not perform the detection.
Sources
- Bates, Phelps, Kim et al. Distributed control circuits across a brain-and-cord connectome. Nature (2026).doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10735-w ↗
- Wu, Nern, Williamson et al. Visual projection neurons in the Drosophila lobula link feature detection to distinct behavioral programs. eLife (2016).doi:10.7554/eLife.21022 ↗
- Klapoetke, Nern, Peek et al. Ultra-selective looming detection from radial motion opponency. Nature (2017).doi:10.1038/nature24626 ↗
- von Reyn, Nern, Williamson et al. Feature integration drives probabilistic behavior in the Drosophila escape response. Nature Neuroscience (2017).doi:10.1038/nn.4581 ↗
- Ache, Polsky, Alghailani et al. Neural basis for looming size and velocity encoding in the Drosophila giant fiber escape pathway. Current Biology (2019).doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.01.079 ↗
- Keleş & Frye. Object-detecting neurons in Drosophila. Current Biology (2017).doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.01.012 ↗
Structure suggests pathways; it does not record neural activity. Signal animations in this experience are explanatory, derived from skeleton geometry and synapse polarity, not measured conduction.
The 28 grooming cells are the BANC-native DNg12 annotation population. That is an annotation of cell type, and it does not imply that every rendered cell was independently function-tested. The looping replay over those cells is explanatory in the same sense: it is derived from skeleton geometry and synapse polarity, not recorded action potentials or measured conduction timing.
With thanks to
- Alexander BatesHarvard University
- Yijie YinUniversity of Cambridge