Impact of walking speed and motion adaptation on optokinetic nystagmus-like head movements in the blowfly Calliphora.

ABSTRACT: The optokinetic nystagmus is a gaze-stabilizing mechanism reducing motion blur by rapid eye rotations against the direction of visual motion, followed by slower syndirectional eye movements minimizing retinal slip speed. Flies control their gaze through head turns controlled by neck motor neurons receiving input directly, or via descending neurons, from well-characterized directional-selective interneurons sensitive to visual wide-field motion. Locomotion increases the gain and speed sensitivity of these interneurons, while visual motion adaptation in walking animals has the opposite effects. To find out whether flies perform an optokinetic nystagmus, and how it may be affected by locomotion and visual motion adaptation, we recorded head movements of blowflies on a trackball stimulated by

SUBMITTER: Longden KD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9262929 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature