The connectome of the adult Drosophila mushroom body provides insights into function
Feng Li et al.
eLife. December 2020
CLIENT
Rubin Lab, HHMI Janelia
TOOLS
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, neuPrint, neuTu, neuVid, Blender, Cytoscape
LINK
DATA
Hemibrain connectome (Scheffer et al. 2020)
Contributions
- Produced 30 videos to show circuit components of the Mushroom Body in adult Drosophila
- Contributed to graphic design and layout of figures
- Wrote custom Cypher and Python scripts to query hemibrain connectome data
- Primarily responsible for Figure 24, including querying data, analysis, and visualization
- Queried data and generated charts for Figure 8 supplemental figures
- Assisted in formal analysis and data validation
Paper Summary
The Mushroom Body (MB) is an extensively studied area in the brain of Drosophila Melanogaster involved in learning, memory, and activity regulation. This paper describes new insights revealed by the hemibrain dataset about the MB circuit. It details atypical MB output neurons (MBONs), which output directly to ventral brain regions and descending neurons as well as direct visual input into the MB. It provides insights about the circuity used to integrate MB outputs including connections to the Central Complex (CX).
Atypical Mushroom Body Output Neurons (MBONs)
Video 27 | MBON to CX
Video 24 | MBON06
Video 32 | PAM11
Video 33| PAM12