Work

Motion vision is independent of color in Drosophila

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: Whether motion vision uses color contrast is a controversial issue that has been investigated in several species, from insects to humans. We used Drosophila to answer this question, monitoring the optomotor response to moving color stimuli in WT and genetic variants. In the fly eye, a motion channel (outer photoreceptors R1-R6) and a color channel (inner photoreceptors R7 and R8) have been distinguished. With moving bars of alternating colors and high color contrast, a brightness ratio of the two colors can be found, at which the optomotor response is largely missing (point of equiluminance). Under these conditions, mutant flies lacking functional rhodopsin in R1-R6 cells do not respond at all. Furthermore, genetically eliminating the function of photoreceptors R7 and R8 neither alters the strength of the optomotor response nor shifts the point of equiluminance. We conclude that the color channel (R7/R8) does not contribute to motion detection as monitored by the optomotor response.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0711484105

Authors: Satoko Yamaguchi, Reinhard Wolf, Claude Desplan, Martin Heisenberg

Institutions: University of Würzburg, New York University

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research

Subfield: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: University of California, San Diego, National Eye Institute

Awards: Circuit formation in the visual centers, Mechanisms of neural patterning and the generation of neural diversity in the brain