Fruit flies maintain the neural circuits on which the sense of orientation depends during navigation.

On May 22, a paper published in the journal Nature reported that fruit flies maintain the neural circuits on which the sense of orientation depends during navigation.
the study could shed inspiration on the spatial navigation capabilities of other animals, such as ants, bees and rodents, and could deepen understanding of how the brain integrates changing input into continuous activity.
Many animals, including birds, mammals and insects, can use their innate sense of orientation to find specific locations in the environment, such as nests and food sources;
previously, studies have shown that spatial navigation relies in part on facing neurons, which are their "built-in compass" in some species, including rodents and fruit flies.
previous studies have identified a doughnut-shaped area around the fruit fly's brain, where researchers were able to observe nerve activity as the animals moved, just as the pointer turned on the compass dial.
Gaby Maimon of Rockefeller University in the United States and colleagues described the neural circuits behind this compass-like activity.
researchers asked fruit flies to walk on an air cushion ball in the center of a virtual background, either with bright visual signs or dark ones.
researchers found a set of neurons in the fruit fly's brain that make the compass "pointer" turn clockwise or counterclockwise, adjusting its orientation as it steers.
There are two subsypes of this steering neuron, P-EN1 (which may be the "throttle" at the beginning of the steering, or it may also assume other orientation-related functions) and P-EN2 (which may be the "brake" at the end of the steering), allowing the orientation system to accurately track the direction of the fruit fly in the dark.
this neural steering mechanism has some key common features with models based on rodent orientation cells, suggesting that insects and mammals may have used the same neural circuit structure when adjusting orientation during navigation.
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