Uncovering the Principles of Navigation in Fruit Flies

[00:00:00]Hi. I'm Pablo.

[00:00:01]I'm a graduate student in Rachel Wilson’s lab and I study the head direction system in fruit flies.

[00:00:06]I do this by putting flies in virtual reality in a rig like this so that I can image the fly’s brain to see where it thinks it's facing as it's walking around in the world.

[00:00:17]I do this because it allows us to study how neural activity moves around in the brain in response to a variable that we can control.

[00:00:25]This is useful for us because it's a really simple system in which we can get really strong answers to how neural activity is calibrated.

[00:00:33]And so, the answers that we get here in fruit flies might translate to people or other organisms in other ways where you might need calibration.

[00:00:42]For example, a patient with Parkinson's may not be able to calibrate a motor movement the way they want to.

[00:00:48]We think that the answers we get here from the fly head direction system might help us understand neural circuit calibration on the whole, which could benefit all of us.