Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Feb 23;107(8):3840-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0912548107. Epub 2010 Feb 3.
The halteres of dipteran insects are essential sensory organs for flight control. They are believed to detect Coriolis and other inertial forces associated with body rotation during flight. Flies use this information for rapid flight control. We show that the primary afferent neurons of the haltere's mechanoreceptors respond selectively with high temporal precision to multiple stimulus features. Although we are able to identify many stimulus features contributing to the response using principal component analysis, predictive models using only two features, common across the cell population, capture most of the cells' encoding activity. However, different sensitivity to these two features permits each cell to respond to sinusoidal stimuli with a different preferred phase. This feature similarity, combined with diverse phase encoding, allows the haltere to transmit information at a high rate about numerous inertial forces, including Coriolis forces.
双翅目昆虫的平衡棒是飞行控制的重要感觉器官。它们被认为可以检测到与飞行过程中身体旋转相关的科里奥利力和其他惯性力。苍蝇利用这些信息进行快速的飞行控制。我们表明，平衡棒机械感受器的初级传入神经元对多种刺激特征具有选择性和高度的时间精度响应。尽管我们可以使用主成分分析来识别对响应有贡献的许多刺激特征，但仅使用两个特征（在细胞群体中常见）的预测模型可以捕获大多数细胞的编码活动。然而，对这两个特征的不同敏感性使得每个细胞可以用不同的优选相位来响应正弦刺激。这种特征相似性，加上多样化的相位编码，使平衡棒能够以高速度传递有关多种惯性力的信息，包括科里奥利力。
