Drosophila Spatiotemporally Integrates Visual Signals to Control Saccades.

ABSTRACT: Like many visually active animals, including humans, flies generate both smooth and rapid saccadic movements to stabilize their gaze. How rapid body saccades and smooth movement interact for simultaneous object pursuit and gaze stabilization is not understood. We directly observed these interactions in magnetically tethered Drosophila free to rotate about the yaw axis. A moving bar elicited sustained bouts of saccades following the bar, with surprisingly little smooth movement. By contrast, a moving panorama elicited robust smooth movement interspersed with occasional optomotor saccades. The amplitude, angular velocity, and torque transients of bar-fixation saccades were finely tuned to the speed of bar motion and were triggered by a threshold in the temporal integral of the bar error angl

SUBMITTER: Mongeau JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5634948 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature