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J Neurophysiol (May 7, 2003). doi:10.1152/jn.00234.2003
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Submitted on March 11, 2003
Accepted on April 30, 2003

Robustness of the tuning of fly visual interneurons to rotatory optic flow

Katja Karmeier1*, Holger G. Krapp2, and Martin Egelhaaf1

1 Department of Neurobiology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
2 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kkarmeier{at}uni-bielefeld.de.

The sophisticated receptive field organization of motion-sensitive tangential cells in the visual system of the blowfly Calliphora vicina matches the structure of particular optic flow fields. Hypotheses on the tuning of particular tangential cells to rotatory self-motion are based on local motion measurements. So far, tangential cells have never been tested with global optic flow stimuli. Therefore, we measured the responses of an identifiable neuron, the V1 tangential cell, to wide-field motion stimuli mimicking optic flow fields similar to those the fly encounters during particular self-motions. The stimuli were generated by `a planetarium-projector', casting a pattern of moving light dots on a large spherical projection screen. We determined the tuning curves of the V1-cell to optic flow fields as induced by the animal during 1.) rotation about horizontally aligned body axes, 2.) upward/downward translation, and 3.) a combination of both components. We found that the V1-cell does not respond as specifically to self-rotations as had been concluded from its rececptive field organization. The neuron responds strongly to upward translation and its tuning to rotations is much coarser than expected. The discrepancies between the responses to global optic flow and the predictions based on the receptive field organization are likely due to nonlinear integration properties of tangential neurons. Response parameters like orientation, shape and width of the tuning curve are largely unaffected by changes in rotation velocity or a superposition of rotational and translational optic flow.




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