Neural coding of leg proprioception

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Project Summary Proprioception, the sense of self-movement and body position, is critical for the effective control of motor behavior. Humans lacking proprioceptive feedback, such as patients with peripheral nerve damage, are unable to maintain limb posture or coordinate fine-scale movements of the arms and legs. But despite the importance of proprioception to the control of movement in all animals, little is known about the neural computations that underlie limb proprioception in any animal. This gap is due to two basic challenges: (1) identifying specific neuronal-cell types that detect and process proprioceptive signals, and (2) recording neural activity from proprioceptive circuits during natural limb movements. Here, we propose to overcome these challenges by investigating the neural coding of leg proprioception in a genetic model organism: the fruit fly, Drosophila. We have developed new methods to record and manipulate the activity of genetically- identified neurons in proprioceptive circuits of behaving flies. We will first determine the functional role of distinct proprioceptor subtypes in controlling limb posture and movement during walking (Aim 1). We will then compare how proprioceptive signals are encoded during passive and active limb movements (Aim 2), and trace down the circuit mechanisms that underlie state-dependent proprioceptive coding (Aim 3). Altogether, these studies will elucidate basic mechanisms of proprioceptive neural processing that have not possible to investigate in other systems. Although there are morphological differences between flies and humans, the basic building blocks of invertebrate and vertebrate somatosensory systems share a striking evolutionary conservation. These similarities suggest that the general principles discovered in circuits of the fruit fly will be highly relevant to somatosensory processing in other animals. A deeper understanding of proprioception has the potential to transform the way in which we treat somatosensory disorders.