Recurrence and color selectivity

Abstract

The perception of color involves a transformation from the spectral properties of visual stimuli to derived perceptual quantities such as brightness, saturation and hue. Although hue selective neurons, which respond to narrow regions in color space, have been reported in primates, they have not been identified in other species including more accessible organisms, which would facilitate circuit level analyses. Here we show that neurons in the Drosophila optic lobe have hue selective properties, with narrow tuning for both spectral and non-spectral colors. We construct a connectomics constrained circuit model that accounts for this hue selectivity. Our model, combined with genetic manipulations, shows that recurrent connections in the circuit are critical for the tuning properties of Drosophila hue selective neurons. Our findings reveal the circuit basis for a transition from physical detection to sensory perception in color vision.

Paper

Hue selectivity from recurrent circuitry
Matthias Christenson*, Alvaro Sanz-Diez*, Sarah L Heath, Maia Saavedra-Weisenhaus, Atsuko Adachi, Larry Abbott, Rudy Behnia
bioRxiv, 2023

Presentation

Columbia Neurotheory Meeting (2022)