IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v9y2018i1d10.1038_s41467-018-06857-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Imaging neural activity in the ventral nerve cord of behaving adult Drosophila

Author

Listed:
  • Chin-Lin Chen

    (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

  • Laura Hermans

    (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

  • Meera C. Viswanathan

    (Johns Hopkins University)

  • Denis Fortun

    (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
    Signal Processing core of the Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM-SP), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
    University of Strasbourg)

  • Florian Aymanns

    (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

  • Michael Unser

    (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

  • Anthony Cammarato

    (Johns Hopkins University
    Johns Hopkins University)

  • Michael H. Dickinson

    (California Institute of Technology)

  • Pavan Ramdya

    (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

Abstract

To understand neural circuits that control limbs, one must measure their activity during behavior. Until now this goal has been challenging, because limb premotor and motor circuits have been largely inaccessible for large-scale recordings in intact, moving animals—a constraint that is true for both vertebrate and invertebrate models. Here, we introduce a method for 2-photon functional imaging from the ventral nerve cord (VNC) of behaving adult Drosophila melanogaster. We use this method to reveal patterns of activity across nerve cord populations during grooming and walking and to uncover the functional encoding of moonwalker ascending neurons (MANs), moonwalker descending neurons (MDNs), and a previously uncharacterized class of locomotion-associated A1 descending neurons. Finally, we develop a genetic reagent to destroy the indirect flight muscles and to facilitate experimental access to the VNC. Taken together, these approaches enable the direct investigation of circuits associated with complex limb movements.

Suggested Citation

  • Chin-Lin Chen & Laura Hermans & Meera C. Viswanathan & Denis Fortun & Florian Aymanns & Michael Unser & Anthony Cammarato & Michael H. Dickinson & Pavan Ramdya, 2018. "Imaging neural activity in the ventral nerve cord of behaving adult Drosophila," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-06857-z
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06857-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06857-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-018-06857-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sophie Aimon & Takeo Katsuki & Tongqiu Jia & Logan Grosenick & Michael Broxton & Karl Deisseroth & Terrence J Sejnowski & Ralph J Greenspan, 2019. "Fast near-whole–brain imaging in adult Drosophila during responses to stimuli and behavior," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-31, February.
    2. Laura Hermans & Murat Kaynak & Jonas Braun & Victor Lobato Ríos & Chin-Lin Chen & Adam Friedberg & Semih Günel & Florian Aymanns & Mahmut Selman Sakar & Pavan Ramdya, 2022. "Microengineered devices enable long-term imaging of the ventral nerve cord in behaving adult Drosophila," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-15, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-06857-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.