How the Drosophila mushroom bodies participate in visual information processing and learning

昆虫大脑中的蘑菇体在嗅觉学习和记忆中发挥着核心作用，其功能与脊椎动物的海马体有些相似。蘑菇体与附近的大脑中心侧角一起，通过投射神经元从触角叶接收嗅觉信息。我们目前对蘑菇身体如何工作的大部分知识--处理和存储嗅觉信息以及回忆嗅觉记忆--都来自对果蝇黑腹果蝇的研究，这使得对这些功能的神经遗传学探索成为可能。然而，蘑菇体也从其他大脑中心接受其他感官输入，如视觉信息。但人们对蘑菇体如何参与视觉信息处理和多感官学习知之甚少。詹姆斯将使用我们的双光子显微镜系统来研究头部固定果蝇的这个问题，这些果蝇在定制的虚拟现实/轨迹球系统中表现出来。他将使用转基因果蝇研究视觉信息是如何在蘑菇体结构中扎根和中性呈现的，在转基因果蝇中，不同蘑菇体叶(以及中央和视觉大脑的其他部分)中的选定神经元表达钙或电压敏感活动报告(分别为GCaMP6f和ASAP4)。詹姆斯将量化由虚拟现实刺激系统传递的视觉刺激，当与蔗糖奖赏或热惩罚联系在一起时，如何改变代表视觉刺激的蘑菇体神经活动；GCaMP6f或ASAP4报告的局部/全局钙或电压变化被视为双光子成像中的局部/全局钙或电压变化。目的是从机械上了解蘑菇体和附近的神经回路如何通道，表示和存储视觉信息，以及参与表示和回忆视觉记忆。

The mushroom bodies in the insect brain play a central role in olfactory learning and memory, performing somewhat analogous functions to vertebrate hippocampus. Together with the nearby brain centre, the lateral horn, the mushroom bodies receive olfactory information from the antennal lobe via projection neurons. Most of our current knowledge of how the mushroom bodies work - process and store olfactory information and recall olfactory memories - comes from studies of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which enables neurogenetic explorations of these functions. However, the mushroom bodies also receive other sensory inputs, such as visual information, from other brain centres. But very little is known how the mushroom bodies participate in visual information processing and multisensory learning.James will use our two-photon microscope system to study this question in head-fixed Drosophila, which behave in a bespoke virtual reality/track-ball system. He will investigate how the visual information is rooted and represented neutrally in the mushroom body structures using transgenic Drosophila, in which selected neurons within the different mushroom body lobes (and elsewhere in the central and visual brain) express calcium- or voltage-sensitive activity reporters (GCaMP6f and ASAP4, respectively). James will quantify how the visual stimuli, as delivered by the virtual reality stimulation system, and when linked with sucrose-reward or heat-punishment, changes the mushroom body neural activity representing the visual stimuli; seen as local/global calcium or voltage changes as reported by GCaMP6f or ASAP4 fluorescence changes in two-photon imaging.The aim is to understand mechanistically how the mushroom body and other nearby neural circuits channel, represent and store visual information and participate in representing and recalling visual memories.