Walking <i>Drosophila</i> aim to maintain a neural heading estimate at an internal goal angle

Abstract

Abstract While navigating their environment, many animals track their angular heading via the activity of heading-sensitive neurons. How internal heading estimates are used to guide navigational behavior, however, remains largely unclear in any species. We found that normal synaptic output from heading neurons in Drosophila is required for flies to stably maintain their trajectory along an arbitrary direction while navigating a simple virtual environment. We further found that if the heading estimate carried by these neurons is experimentally redirected by focal stimulation, the fly typically turns so as to rotate this internal heading estimate back towards the initial angle, while also slowing down until this correction has been made. These experiments argue that flies compare an internal heading estimate with an internal goal angle to guide navigational decisions, highlighting an important computation underlying how a spatial variable in the brain is translated into navigational action. One Sentence Summary Flies compare an internal heading estimate with an internal goal angle to guide navigation.