A large-scale behavioral screen to identify neurons controlling motor programs in the Drosophila brain.

ABSTRACT: Drosophila is increasingly used for understanding the neural basis of behavior through genetically targeted manipulation of specific neurons. The primary approach in this regard has relied on the suppression of neuronal activity. Here, we report the results of a novel approach to find and characterize neural circuits by expressing neuronal activators to stimulate subsets of neurons to induce behavior. Classical electrophysiological studies demonstrated that stimulation of command neurons could activate neural circuits to trigger fixed action patterns. Our method was designed to find such command neurons for diverse behaviors by screening flies in which random subsets of brain cells were activated. We took advantage of the large collection of Gal4 lines from the NP project and crossed 835 G

SUBMITTER: Flood TF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3789788 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature