Odor-identity dependent motor programs underlie behavioral responses to odors

Sensorimotor transformation underlying odor-modulated locomotion in walking Drosophila

Most real-world behaviors - such as odor-guided locomotion - are performed with incomplete information. Activity in olfactory receptor neuron (ORN) classes provides information about odor identity but not the location of its source. In this study, we investigate the sensorimotor transformation that relates ORN activation to locomotion changes in Drosophila by optogenetically activating different combinations of ORN classes and measuring the resulting changes in locomotion. Three features describe this sensorimotor transformation: First, locomotion depends on both the instantaneous firing frequency (f) and its change (df); the two together serve as a short-term memory that allows the fly to adapt its motor program to sensory context automatically. Second, the mapping between (f, df) and locomotor parameters such as speed or curvature is distinct for each pattern of activated ORNs. Finally, the sensorimotor mapping changes with time after odor exposure, allowing information integration over a longer timescale.

An insect-inspired model facilitating autonomous navigation by incorporating goal approaching and collision avoidance

Being one of the most fundamental and crucial capacity of robots and animals, autonomous navigation that consists of goal approaching and collision avoidance enables completion of various tasks while traversing different environments. In light of the impressive navigational abilities of insects despite their tiny brains compared to mammals, the idea of seeking solutions from insects for the two key problems of navigation, i.e., goal approaching and collision avoidance, has fascinated researchers and engineers for many years. However, previous bio-inspired studies have focused on merely one of these two problems at one time. Insect-inspired navigation algorithms that synthetically incorporate both goal approaching and collision avoidance, and studies that investigate the interactions of these two mechanisms in the context of sensory-motor closed-loop autonomous navigation are lacking. To fill this gap, we propose an insect-inspired autonomous navigation algorithm to integrate the goal approaching mechanism as the global working memory inspired by the sweat bee's path integration (PI) mechanism, and the collision avoidance model as the local immediate cue built upon the locust's lobula giant movement detector (LGMD) model. The presented algorithm is utilized to drive agents to complete navigation task in a sensory-motor closed-loop manner within a bounded static or dynamic environment. Simulation results demonstrate that the synthetic algorithm is capable of guiding the agent to complete challenging navigation tasks in a robust and efficient way. This study takes the first tentative step to integrate the insect-like navigation mechanisms with different functionalities (i.e., global goal and local interrupt) into a coordinated control system that future research avenues could build upon.

Continuous odor profile monitoring to study olfactory navigation in small animals

Olfactory navigation is observed across species and plays a crucial role in locating resources for survival. In the laboratory, understanding the behavioral strategies and neural circuits underlying odor-taxis requires a detailed understanding of the animal's sensory environment. For small model organisms like Caenorhabditis elegans and larval Drosophila melanogaster, controlling and measuring the odor environment experienced by the animal can be challenging, especially for airborne odors, which are subject to subtle effects from airflow, temperature variation, and from the odor's adhesion, adsorption, or reemission. Here, we present a method to control and measure airborne odor concentration in an arena compatible with an agar substrate. Our method allows continuous controlling and monitoring of the odor profile while imaging animal behavior. We construct stationary chemical landscapes in an odor flow chamber through spatially patterned odorized air. The odor concentration is measured with a spatially distributed array of digital gas sensors. Careful placement of the sensors allows the odor concentration across the arena to be continuously inferred in space and monitored through time. We use this approach to measure the odor concentration that each animal experiences as it undergoes chemotaxis behavior and report chemotaxis strategies for C. elegans and D. melanogaster larvae populations as they navigate spatial odor landscapes.

Olfactory navigation in arthropods

Using odors to find food and mates is one of the most ancient and highly conserved behaviors. Arthropods from flies to moths to crabs use broadly similar strategies to navigate toward odor sources-such as integrating flow information with odor information, comparing odor concentration across sensors, and integrating odor information over time. Because arthropods share many homologous brain structures-antennal lobes for processing olfactory information, mechanosensors for processing flow, mushroom bodies (or hemi-ellipsoid bodies) for associative learning, and central complexes for navigation, it is likely that these closely related behaviors are mediated by conserved neural circuits. However, differences in the types of odors they seek, the physics of odor dispersal, and the physics of locomotion in water, air, and on substrates mean that these circuits must have adapted to generate a wide diversity of odor-seeking behaviors. In this review, we discuss common strategies and specializations observed in olfactory navigation behavior across arthropods, and review our current knowledge about the neural circuits subserving this behavior. We propose that a comparative study of arthropod nervous systems may provide insight into how a set of basic circuit structures has diversified to generate behavior adapted to different environments.

Olfaction: The smell stops here

A recent study has shown that, in the fly Drosophila, olfactory neurons stop signaling when smells get too strong. This changes the way we think about odor encoding across concentrations.

Behavioral algorithms and neural mechanisms underlying odor-modulated locomotion in insects

Odors released from mates and resources such as a host and food are often the first sensory signals that an animal can detect. Changes in locomotion in response to odors are an important mechanism by which animals access resources important to their survival. Odor-modulated changes in locomotion in insects constitute a whole suite of flexible behaviors that allow insects to close in on these resources from long distances and perform local searches to locate and subsequently assess them. Here, we review changes in odor-mediated locomotion across many insect species. We emphasize that changes in locomotion induced by odors are diverse. In particular, the olfactory stimulus is sporadic at long distances and becomes more continuous at short distances. This distance-dependent change in temporal profile produces a corresponding change in an insect's locomotory strategy. We also discuss the neural circuits underlying odor modulation of locomotion.

Odour motion sensing enhances navigation of complex plumes

Odour plumes in the wild are spatially complex and rapidly fluctuating structures carried by turbulent airflows^1-4. To successfully navigate plumes in search of food and mates, insects must extract and integrate multiple features of the odour signal, including odour identity⁵, intensity⁶ and timing^6-12. Effective navigation requires balancing these multiple streams of olfactory information and integrating them with other sensory inputs, including mechanosensory and visual cues^9,12,13. Studies dating back a century have indicated that, of these many sensory inputs, the wind provides the main directional cue in turbulent plumes, leading to the longstanding model of insect odour navigation as odour-elicited upwind motion^6,8-12,14,15. Here we show that Drosophila melanogaster shape their navigational decisions using an additional directional cue-the direction of motion of odours-which they detect using temporal correlations in the odour signal between their two antennae. Using a high-resolution virtual-reality paradigm to deliver spatiotemporally complex fictive odours to freely walking flies, we demonstrate that such odour-direction sensing involves algorithms analogous to those in visual-direction sensing¹⁶. Combining simulations, theory and experiments, we show that odour motion contains valuable directional information that is absent from the airflow alone, and that both Drosophila and virtual agents are aided by that information in navigating naturalistic plumes. The generality of our findings suggests that odour-direction sensing may exist throughout the animal kingdom and could improve olfactory robot navigation in uncertain environments.

A neural circuit for wind-guided olfactory navigation

To navigate towards a food source, animals frequently combine odor cues about source identity with wind direction cues about source location. Where and how these two cues are integrated to support navigation is unclear. Here we describe a pathway to the Drosophila fan-shaped body that encodes attractive odor and promotes upwind navigation. We show that neurons throughout this pathway encode odor, but not wind direction. Using connectomics, we identify fan-shaped body local neurons called h∆C that receive input from this odor pathway and a previously described wind pathway. We show that h∆C neurons exhibit odor-gated, wind direction-tuned activity, that sparse activation of h∆C neurons promotes navigation in a reproducible direction, and that h∆C activity is required for persistent upwind orientation during odor. Based on connectome data, we develop a computational model showing how h∆C activity can promote navigation towards a goal such as an upwind odor source. Our results suggest that odor and wind cues are processed by separate pathways and integrated within the fan-shaped body to support goal-directed navigation.

Mechanisms of Variability Underlying Odor-Guided Locomotion

Changes in locomotion mediated by odors (odor-guided locomotion) are an important mechanism by which animals discover resources important to their survival. Odor-guided locomotion, like most other behaviors, is highly variable. Variability in behavior can arise at many nodes along the circuit that performs sensorimotor transformation. We review these sources of variability in the context of the Drosophila olfactory system. While these sources of variability are important, using a model for locomotion, we show that another important contributor to behavioral variability is the stochastic nature of decision-making during locomotion as well as the persistence of these decisions: Flies choose the speed and curvature stochastically from a distribution and locomote with the same speed and curvature for extended periods. This stochasticity in locomotion will result in variability in behavior even if there is no noise in sensorimotor transformation. Overall, the noise in sensorimotor transformation is amplified by mechanisms of locomotion making odor-guided locomotion in flies highly variable.

Most primary olfactory neurons have individually neutral effects on behavior

Animals use olfactory receptors to navigate mates, food, and danger. However, for complex olfactory systems, it is unknown what proportion of primary olfactory sensory neurons can individually drive avoidance or attraction. Similarly, the rules that govern behavioral responses to receptor combinations are unclear. We used optogenetic analysis in Drosophila to map the behavior elicited by olfactory-receptor neuron (ORN) classes: just one-fifth of ORN-types drove either avoidance or attraction. Although wind and hunger are closely linked to olfaction, neither had much effect on single-class responses. Several pooling rules have been invoked to explain how ORN types combine their behavioral influences; we activated two-way combinations and compared patterns of single- and double-ORN responses: these comparisons were inconsistent with simple pooling. We infer that the majority of primary olfactory sensory neurons have neutral behavioral effects individually, but participate in broad, odor-elicited ensembles with potent behavioral effects arising from complex interactions.

How the insect central complex could coordinate multimodal navigation

The central complex of the insect midbrain is thought to coordinate insect guidance strategies. Computational models can account for specific behaviours, but their applicability across sensory and task domains remains untested. Here, we assess the capacity of our previous model (Sun et al. 2020) of visual navigation to generalise to olfactory navigation and its coordination with other guidance in flies and ants. We show that fundamental to this capacity is the use of a biologically plausible neural copy-and-shift mechanism that ensures sensory information is presented in a format compatible with the insect steering circuit regardless of its source. Moreover, the same mechanism is shown to allow the transfer cues from unstable/egocentric to stable/geocentric frames of reference, providing a first account of the mechanism by which foraging insects robustly recover from environmental disturbances. We propose that these circuits can be flexibly repurposed by different insect navigators to address their unique ecological needs.

Correlated decision making across multiple phases of olfactory guided search in Drosophila improves search efficiency

Nearly all motile organisms must search for food, often requiring multiple phases of exploration across heterogeneous environments. The fruit fly, Drosophila, has emerged as an effective model system for studying this behavior, however, little is known about the extent to which experiences at one point in their search might influence decisions in another. To investigate whether prior experiences impact flies' search behavior after landing, I tracked individually labelled fruit flies as they explored three odor emitting but food-barren objects. I found two features of their behavior that are correlated with the distance they travel on foot. First, flies walked larger distances when they approached the odor source, which they were almost twice as likely to do when landing on the patch farthest downwind. Computational fluid dynamics simulations suggest this patch may have had a stronger baseline odor, but only ∼15% higher than the other two. This small increase, together with flies' high olfactory sensitivity, suggests that perhaps their flight trajectory used to approach the patches plays a role. Second, flies also walked larger distances when the time elapsed since their last visit was longer. However, the correlation is subtle and subject to a large degree of variability. Using agent-based models, I show that this small correlation can increase search efficiency by 25-50% across many scenarios. Furthermore, my models provide mechanistic hypotheses explaining the variability through either a noisy or straightforward decision-making process. Surprisingly, these stochastic decision-making algorithms enhance search efficiency in challenging but realistic search scenarios compared to deterministic strategies.

Manipulations of the olfactory circuit highlight the role of sensory stimulation in regulating sleep amount

STUDY OBJECTIVES

While wake duration is a major sleep driver, an important question is if wake quality also contributes to controlling sleep. In particular, we sought to determine whether changes in sensory stimulation affect sleep in Drosophila. As Drosophila rely heavily on their sense of smell, we focused on manipulating olfactory input and the olfactory sensory pathway.

METHODS

Sensory deprivation was first performed by removing antennae or applying glue to antennae. We then measured sleep in response to neural activation, via expression of the thermally gated cation channel TRPA1, or inhibition, via expression of the inward rectifying potassium channel KIR2.1, of subpopulations of neurons in the olfactory pathway. Genetically restricting manipulations to adult animals prevented developmental effects.

RESULTS

We find that olfactory deprivation reduces sleep, largely independently of mushroom bodies that integrate olfactory signals for memory consolidation and have previously been implicated in sleep. However, specific neurons in the lateral horn, the other third-order target of olfactory input, affect sleep. Also, activation of inhibitory second-order projection neurons increases sleep. No single neuronal population in the olfactory processing pathway was found to bidirectionally regulate sleep, and reduced sleep in response to olfactory deprivation may be masked by temperature changes.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings demonstrate that Drosophila sleep is sensitive to sensory stimulation, and identify novel sleep-regulating neurons in the olfactory circuit. Scaling of signals across the circuit may explain the lack of bidirectional effects when neuronal activity is manipulated. We propose that olfactory inputs act through specific circuit components to modulate sleep in flies.

Walking Drosophila navigate complex plumes using stochastic decisions biased by the timing of odor encounters

How insects navigate complex odor plumes, where the location and timing of odor packets are uncertain, remains unclear. Here we imaged complex odor plumes simultaneously with freely-walking flies, quantifying how behavior is shaped by encounters with individual odor packets. We found that navigation was stochastic and did not rely on the continuous modulation of speed or orientation. Instead, flies turned stochastically with stereotyped saccades, whose direction was biased upwind by the timing of prior odor encounters, while the magnitude and rate of saccades remained constant. Further, flies used the timing of odor encounters to modulate the transition rates between walks and stops. In more regular environments, flies continuously modulate speed and orientation, even though encounters can still occur randomly due to animal motion. We find that in less predictable environments, where encounters are random in both space and time, walking flies navigate with random walks biased by encounter timing.

Mini-brain computations converting dynamic olfactory inputs into orientation behavior

The neural logic underlying the conversion of non-stationary (dynamic) olfactory inputs into odor-search behaviors has been difficult to crack due to the distributed nature of the olfactory code - food odors typically co-activate multiple olfactory sensory neurons. In the Drosophila larva, the activity of a single olfactory sensory neuron is sufficient to direct accurate reorientation maneuvers in odor gradients (chemotaxis). In this reduced sensory system, a descending pathway essential for larval chemotaxis has been delineated from the peripheral olfactory system down to the premotor system. Here, I review how anatomical and functional inspections of this pathway have advanced our understanding of the neural mechanisms that convert behaviorally relevant sensory signals into orientation responses.

Mechanisms underlying attraction to odors in walking Drosophila

Mechanisms that control movements range from navigational mechanisms, in which the animal employs directional cues to reach a specific destination, to search movements during which there are little or no environmental cues. Even though most real-world movements result from an interplay between these mechanisms, an experimental system and theoretical framework for the study of interplay of these mechanisms is not available. Here, we rectify this deficit. We create a new method to stimulate the olfactory system in Drosophila or fruit flies. As flies explore a circular arena, their olfactory receptor neuron (ORNs) are optogenetically activated within a central region making this region attractive to the flies without emitting any clear directional signals outside this central region. In the absence of ORN activation, the fly’s locomotion can be described by a random walk model where a fly’s movement is described by its speed and turn-rate (or kinematics). Upon optogenetic stimulation, the fly’s behavior changes dramatically in two respects. First, there are large kinematic changes. Second, there are more turns at the border between light-zone and no-light-zone and these turns have an inward bias. Surprisingly, there is no increase in turn-rate, rather a large decrease in speed that makes it appear that the flies are turning at the border. Similarly, the inward bias of the turns is a result of the increase in turn angle. These two mechanisms entirely account for the change in a fly’s locomotion. No complex mechanisms such as path-integration or a careful evaluation of gradients are necessary.

The strategy an animal employs to explore the environment and to find and return to the location where it has previously found food or mates is an important part of its behavior. In nature, animals have incomplete information about their environment, and must use this incomplete information to navigate. In most laboratory experiments, there is usually clear directional information making it difficult to infer an animal’s real strategy from laboratory behavioral experiments. In this study, we devise a new behavioral task wherein we remotely activate olfactory neurons when fruit flies are in a given location. This activation makes a given location attractive to the flies without providing any directional information and allows us to assess how flies navigate under these conditions. We find that flies navigate towards the activated location using two simple mechanisms: First, its speed in the activated region and its turn rate is much lower than it is elsewhere. Second, at the boundary of the odor-zone, its speed decreases dramatically and its turns become much sharper. Essentially, these simple mechanisms appear to be extremely robust.

Olfactory Neurons and Brain Centers Directing Oviposition Decisions in Drosophila

The sense of smell influences many behaviors, yet how odors are represented in the brain remains unclear. A major challenge to studying olfaction is the lack of methods allowing activation of specific types of olfactory neurons in an ethologically relevant setting. To address this, we developed a genetic method in Drosophila called olfactogenetics in which a narrowly tuned odorant receptor, Or56a, is ectopically expressed in different olfactory neuron types. Stimulation with geosmin (the only known Or56a ligand) in an Or56a mutant background leads to specific activation of only target olfactory neuron types. We used this approach to identify olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) that directly guide oviposition decisions. We identify 5 OSN-types (Or71a, Or47b, Or49a, Or67b, and Or7a) that, when activated alone, suppress oviposition. Projection neurons partnering with these OSNs share a region of innervation in the lateral horn, suggesting that oviposition site selection might be encoded in this brain region.

Multisensory control of navigation in the fruit fly

Spatial navigation is influenced by cues from nearly every sensory modality and thus provides an excellent model for understanding how different sensory streams are integrated to drive behavior. Here we review recent work on multisensory control of navigation in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, which allows for detailed circuit dissection. We identify four modes of integration that have been described in the literature-suppression, gating, summation, and association-and describe regions of the larval and adult brain that have been implicated in sensory integration. Finally we discuss what circuit architectures might support these different forms of integration. We argue that Drosophila is an excellent model to discover these circuit and biophysical motifs.

Neuronal mechanisms underlying innate and learned olfactory processing in Drosophila

Olfaction allows animals to adapt their behavior in response to different chemical cues in their environment. How does the brain efficiently discriminate different odors to drive appropriate behavior, and how does it flexibly assign value to odors to adjust behavior according to experience? This review traces neuronal mechanisms underlying these processes in adult Drosophila melanogaster from olfactory receptors to higher brain centers. We highlight neural circuit principles such as lateral inhibition, segregation and integration of olfactory channels, temporal accumulation of sensory evidence, and compartmentalized synaptic plasticity underlying associative memory.

Food-derived volatiles enhance consumption in Drosophila melanogaster

Insects use multiple sensory modalities when searching for and accepting a food source, in particular odor and taste cues. Food-derived odorants are generally involved in mediating long- and short-range attraction. Taste cues, in contrast, act directly by contact with the food source, promoting the ingestion of nutritious food and the avoidance of toxic substances. It is possible, however, that insects integrate information from these sensory modalities during the process of feeding itself. Here, using a simple feeding assay, we investigated whether odors modulate food consumption in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster We found that the presence of both single food-derived odorants and complex odor mixtures enhanced consumption of an appetitive food. Feeding enhancement depended on the concentration and the chemical identity of the odorant. Volatile cues alone were sufficient to mediate this effect, as feeding was also increased when animals were prevented from contacting the odor source. Both males and females, including virgin females, increased ingestion in the presence of food-derived volatiles. Moreover, the presence of food-derived odorants significantly increased the consumption of food mixtures containing aversive bitter compounds, suggesting that flies integrate diverse olfactory and gustatory cues to guide feeding decisions, including situations in which animals are confronted with stimuli of opposite valence. Overall, these results show that food-derived olfactory cues directly modulate feeding in D. melanogaster, enhancing ingestion.

Neurogenetic dissection of the Drosophila lateral horn reveals major outputs, diverse behavioural functions, and interactions with the mushroom body

Animals exhibit innate behaviours to a variety of sensory stimuli including olfactory cues. In Drosophila, one higher olfactory centre, the lateral horn (LH), is implicated in innate behaviour. However, our structural and functional understanding of the LH is scant, in large part due to a lack of sparse neurogenetic tools for this region. We generate a collection of split-GAL4 driver lines providing genetic access to 82 LH cell types. We use these to create an anatomical and neurotransmitter map of the LH and link this to EM connectomics data. We find ~30% of LH projections converge with outputs from the mushroom body, site of olfactory learning and memory. Using optogenetic activation, we identify LH cell types that drive changes in valence behavior or specific locomotor programs. In summary, we have generated a resource for manipulating and mapping LH neurons, providing new insights into the circuit basis of innate and learned olfactory behavior.

Diverse Food-Sensing Neurons Trigger Idiothetic Local Search in Drosophila

Foraging animals may benefit from remembering the location of a newly discovered food patch while continuing to explore nearby [1, 2]. For example, after encountering a drop of yeast or sugar, hungry flies often perform a local search [3, 4]. That is, rather than remaining on the food or simply walking away, flies execute a series of exploratory excursions during which they repeatedly depart and return to the resource. Fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, can perform this food-centered search behavior in the absence of external landmarks, instead relying on internal (idiothetic) cues [5]. This path-integration behavior may represent a deeply conserved navigational capacity in insects [6, 7], but its underlying neural basis remains unknown. Here, we used optogenetic activation to screen candidate cell classes and found that local searches can be initiated by diverse sensory neurons. Optogenetically induced searches resemble those triggered by actual food, are modulated by starvation state, and exhibit key features of path integration. Flies perform tightly centered searches around the fictive food site, even within a constrained maze, and they can return to the fictive food site after long excursions. Together, these results suggest that flies enact local searches in response to a wide variety of food-associated cues and that these sensory pathways may converge upon a common neural system for navigation. Using a virtual reality system, we demonstrate that local searches can be optogenetically induced in tethered flies walking on a spherical treadmill, laying the groundwork for future studies to image the brain during path integration. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Statistical structure of locomotion and its modulation by odors

Most behaviors such as making tea are not stereotypical but have an obvious structure. However, analytical methods to objectively extract structure from non-stereotyped behaviors are immature. In this study, we analyze the locomotion of fruit flies and show that this non-stereotyped behavior is well-described by a Hierarchical Hidden Markov Model (HHMM). HHMM shows that a fly's locomotion can be decomposed into a few locomotor features, and odors modulate locomotion by altering the time a fly spends performing different locomotor features. Importantly, although all flies in our dataset use the same set of locomotor features, individual flies vary considerably in how often they employ a given locomotor feature, and how this usage is modulated by odor. This variation is so large that the behavior of individual flies is best understood as being grouped into at least three to five distinct clusters, rather than variations around an average fly.

Elementary sensory-motor transformations underlying olfactory navigation in walking fruit-flies

Odor attraction in walking Drosophila melanogaster is commonly used to relate neural function to behavior, but the algorithms underlying attraction are unclear. Here, we develop a high-throughput assay to measure olfactory behavior in response to well-controlled sensory stimuli. We show that odor evokes two behaviors: an upwind run during odor (ON response), and a local search at odor offset (OFF response). Wind orientation requires antennal mechanoreceptors, but search is driven solely by odor. Using dynamic odor stimuli, we measure the dependence of these two behaviors on odor intensity and history. Based on these data, we develop a navigation model that recapitulates the behavior of flies in our apparatus, and generates realistic trajectories when run in a turbulent boundary layer plume. The ability to parse olfactory navigation into quantifiable elementary sensori-motor transformations provides a foundation for dissecting neural circuits that govern olfactory behavior.

Behavioral readout of spatio-temporal codes in olfaction

Neural recordings performed at an increasing scale and resolution have revealed complex, spatio-temporally precise patterns of activity in the olfactory system. Multiple models may explain the functional consequences of the spatio-temporal olfactory code, but the link to behavior remains unclear. Recent evidence in the field suggests a behavioral sensitivity to both fine spatial and temporal features in the code. How these features and combinations of features give rise to olfactory behavior is the subject of active research in the field. Modern genetic and optogenetic methods show great promise in testing the link between olfactory codes and behavior.

Behavior Reveals Selective Summation and Max Pooling among Olfactory Processing Channels

The olfactory system is divided into processing channels (glomeruli), each receiving input from a different type of olfactory receptor neuron (ORN). Here we investigated how glomeruli combine to control behavior in freely walking Drosophila. We found that optogenetically activating single ORN types typically produced attraction, although some ORN types produced repulsion. Attraction consisted largely of a behavioral program with the following rules: at fictive odor onset, flies walked upwind, and at fictive odor offset, they reversed. When certain pairs of attractive ORN types were co-activated, the level of the behavioral response resembled the sum of the component responses. However, other pairs of attractive ORN types produced a response resembling the larger component (max pooling). Although activation of different ORN combinations produced different levels of behavior, the rules of the behavioral program were consistent. Our results illustrate a general method for inferring how groups of neurons work together to modulate behavioral programs.

Dynamics of memory-guided choice behavior in Drosophila

Memory retrieval requires both accuracy and speed. Olfactory learning of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serves as a powerful model system to identify molecular and neuronal substrates of memory and memory-guided behavior. The behavioral expression of olfactory memory has traditionally been tested as a conditioned odor response in a simple T-maze, which measures the result, but not the speed, of odor choice. Here, we developed multiplexed T-mazes that allow video recording of the choice behavior. Automatic fly counting in each arm of the maze visualizes choice dynamics. Using this setup, we show that the transient blockade of serotonergic neurons slows down the choice, while leaving the eventual choice intact. In contrast, activation of the same neurons impairs the eventual performance leaving the choice speed unchanged. Our new apparatus contributes to elucidating how the speed and the accuracy of memory retrieval are implemented in the fly brain.