The influence of stimulus history on directional coding in the monarch butterfly brain.

ABSTRACT: The central complex is a brain region in the insect brain that houses a neural network specialized to encode directional information. Directional coding has traditionally been investigated with compass cues that revolve in full rotations and at constant angular velocities around the insect's head. However, these stimulus conditions do not fully simulate an insect's sensory perception of compass cues during navigation. In nature, an insect flight is characterized by abrupt changes in moving direction as well as constant changes in velocity. The influence of such varying cue dynamics on compass coding remains unclear. We performed long-term tetrode recordings from the brain of monarch butterflies to study how central complex neurons respond to different stimulus velocities and directions. As

SUBMITTER: Beetz MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10354184 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature