Vivek Jayaraman wants to understand how animals act flexibly, relying on current context and past experiences to achieve desirable outcomes. Jayaraman and his team study how the Drosophila brain constructs internal representations of the fly’s whereabouts, internal state, and actions, and links these representations to memories of positive and negative consequences so the fly can make appropriate behavioral decisions. The team uses a combination of optical and electrophysiological recordings, optogenetics, electron microscopy, quantitative behavior, and theoretical and computational techniques to understand the organization and dynamics of the relevant brain circuits.
Flies use visual cues to finesse their mental maps of the environment. Two new studies use virtual reality to show how.  Janelia Research Campus scientists have uncovered new clues about how fruit flies keep track of where they are in the world. Understanding the neural basis of navigation in flies may reveal how humans accomplish similar feats. New research hints at strategies fruit flies use to keep track of where they are going, even when it’s dark. Neurons deep in the fly’s brain tune in to some of the same basic visual features that neurons in bigger animals such as humans pick out in their surroundings. The new research is an important milestone toward understanding how the fly brain extracts relevant information about a visual scene to guide behavior. A new protein engineered by scientists at the Janelia Farm Research Campus fluoresces brightly each time it senses calcium, giving the scientists a way to visualize neuronal activity. The new protein is the most sensitive calcium sensor ever developed and the first to allow the detection of every neural impulse. Over the past year, two scientists who have been at Janelia since its opening took on new roles as group leaders, and six new fellows were recruited to head their own research groups.