Muscles that move the retina augment compound eye vision in Drosophila.

ABSTRACT: Most animals have compound eyes, with tens to thousands of lenses attached rigidly to the exoskeleton. A natural assumption is that all of these species must resort to moving either their head or their body to actively change their visual input. However, classic anatomy has revealed that flies have muscles poised to move their retinas under the stable lenses of each compound eye^1-3. Here we show that Drosophila use their retinal muscles to smoothly track visual motion, which helps to stabilize the retinal image, and also to perform small saccades when viewing a stationary scene. We show that when the retina moves, visual receptive fields shift accordingly, and that even the smallest retinal saccades activate visual neurons. Using a head-fixed behavioural paradigm, we find that D

SUBMITTER: Fenk LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10103069 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature