1/8 Breathing seems automatic. But it's a finely tuned motor behavior that has to be controlled. In this preprint, I map the circuits that match a fly's respiration to the metabolic demands of flight and mitigate the risk of dehydration. 🧵🪰 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New paper: Spinal circuitry modeled for locomotion using spatial transcriptomics and cell-type projections. Local excitation, long-range inhibition, and a longitudinal skew—an asymmetric "Mexican hat"—give rhythm, rotational dynamics, and gait, with no pacemakers. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Now published - the #BANC! A full central nervous system (CNS) connectome of a limbed animal at single-synapse resolution, enabling us to follow sensory-motor arcs and understand how the CNS controls the body. rdcu.be/fncjS. #neuroscience. Video by @quorumetrix.bsky.social 1/18

Here’s our latest preprint on uncovering neural control of a coordinated walking pattern! doi.org/10.64898/202... (author-list jumbled, see pdf for corrected). Video shows the central paradigm in this study, we optogenetically induce walking in headless flies and sequentially reduce proprioception.

New preprint: Whole-body 3D kinematics of freely behaving 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 New tech from @blobology.bsky.social & others at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social, which @ispizua.bsky.social and @elliottabe.bsky.social used to gain insight into 3D structure of locomotion & courtship www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New paper from Brandon Pratt, @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social, and colleagues on how hair plate proprioceptors sense joint limits and contribute to sensorimotor control of walking. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sometimes failed experiments reveal gaps in how we are thinking about a problem, and digging into why an experiment didn't work can lead to discovery. This new preprint by Anne Sustar, in collaboration with Dion Dickman's lab, is one of those gratifying instances.🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thrilled to share that my graduate work is officially published in Neuron! 🎉 www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Specialized parallel pathways for adaptive control of visual object pursuit

Collie et al. show how adaptive control in Drosophila visual pursuit arises from two parallel pathways: one steers objects from the periphery toward the center, while the other maintains central fixat...

cell.com

How does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...

How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...

How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm? Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg. w @bingbrunton.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint: Neural manifolds that orchestrate walking and stopping Here we develop a new theory for neural generation of walking and how it can stop- Next we test the theory using Neuropixels probes in the lumber spinal cord of freely moving rats. See more: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....

Male CNS Connectome

A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

janelia.org

The Agrawal lab is moving! This January we will be setting up shop at #UBC in Vancouver, in the department of #Zoology! We are actively recruiting at all levels, especially masters and PhD students. These position are #funded! Please send anyone interested my way!

Now out in @nature.com: Our study discovering a neural circuit in Drosophila that predictively inhibits proprioceptor axons during voluntary leg movements, such as walking and grooming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The first full central nervous system connectome dataset of an adult fly, with the most comprehensive annotation of sensory and motor neurons to date. A heroic effort with contributions from many groups, a product of the collaborative spirit of the Drosophila neuroscience community.

Matt Collie@mottcallie.bsky.social · last yr.

Happy Friday! The female adult fly brain-and-nerve-cord (BANC) connectome is now LIVE! Explore the data here: codex.flywire.ai?dataset=banc Check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Preprint Alert! Walking mostly feels natural and easy to us - but the neuronal control of walking is actually incredibly complex. We leveraged the fruit fly as a genetically tractable animal model with a compact nervous system to ask how the brain controls walking direction: tinyurl.com/flywalk. 🧵..

a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

ALT: a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

media.tenor.com

Embodiment is the concept that the function of the brain is inexorably shaped by the body, a lens that is often neglected when neuroscientists study specific brain subsystems, write @bingbrunton.bsky.social and @tuthill.bsky.social. #neuroskyence #neuroai www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/brea...

Breaking the jar: Why NeuroAI needs embodiment

Brain function is inexorably shaped by the body. Embracing this will benefit computational models of real brain function and the design of ANNs.

thetransmitter.org

new preprint, led by @ellenlesser.bsky.social, on proprioceptive sensing of the Drosophila wing. tldr, there are a lot of proprioceptors out in the wing and they are wildly diverse and complex (eg, compared to the fly leg). just one example in this image...(1/4) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to contribute imaging data to this project! The axons of these sensory neurons showed beautiful calcium signals in the nerve cord when the fly's leg joints reached the limits of their movement range. Check out the full story!

John Tuthill@tuthill.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint from the lab, led by grad student Brandon Pratt, on the encoding properties and sensorimotor function of proprioceptive limit detectors (ie, hair plates) in the fly leg. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share my PhD paper is out! We studied how motion vision is processed beyond the optic lobes to help flies walk straight. It has been a wonderful collaboration with @michaelreiser.bsky.social, @dddavi.bsky.social and many others not in bluesky! Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...

Champalimaud Research@champalimaudr.bsky.social · last yr.

🪰How does a fruit fly walk or fly in a perfectly straight line — even at high speed? It’s not just sharp vision. A sophisticated neural computation is at work. 🧠New study led by @champalimaudf.bsky.social Eugenia Chiappe. 📖 www.fchampalimaud.org/news/researc... Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to announce that our paper examining the function of leg mechanosensory neurons by way of their connectivity is finally officially published! rdcu.be/ekqVt

Divergent neural circuits for proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensing of the Drosophila leg

Nature Communications - Determining whether somatosensory neurons are involved in internal or external sensing remains a challenge. Here, the authors show that analyzing connectivity is a powerful...

rdcu.be

Yay - the extensive review Ansgar Büschges and I wrote on insect motor control and the many things insects can teach us about our own nervous systems just came out in Physiological Reviews @apsphysiology.bsky.social. Check it out - it's free: journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10....

The brain is incredibly complex. How do we analyze the growing and massive datasets to create a general model of neural computation? Eva Dyer and @tyrellturing.bsky.social share their perspective on what needs to happen next in @thetransmitter.bsky.social. www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/acce...

Accepting “bitter lesson” and embracing brain’s complexity

To gain insight into complex neural data, we must move toward a data-driven regime, employing large models trained on vast amounts of data. Experts weigh in.

thetransmitter.org

Excited to present my #HorizonEU MSCA project with @jan-ache.bsky.social at the @neurowissg.bsky.social meeting in Göttingen. If you're interested in how brain circuits control locomotion, come chat with me at poster T23-6C on Friday. #NWG2025 #Drosophila

Registration started for the Janelia meeting on spinal cord and brainstem circuits for sensorimotor adaptation across species. Spinal cord is more than a hub, it does supercomputing! www.janelia.org/you-janelia/...

Computing Cords: Sensorimotor Control by Nerve Cord Circuits Across Species

Organizers Salil Bidaye, Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience Ansgar Büschges, University of Cologne Graziana Gatto, University of Cologne Abdel El Manira, Karolinska Institutet Julie

janelia.org

I wrote a piece for @thetransmitter.bsky.social about why I love participating in experimental summer courses, particularly @nsb-mbl.bsky.social. www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...