Fruit flies need a short-term (working) memory to keep their direction when they navigate their way to the fruit by smelling.
Mean-field ring models was theoretically suggested to encode stimulus orientations 30 years and was observed in fruit-fly compass neurons 10 years ago. But how does odor input come into the picture to set the compass course?
The group of the guest has studied the question with a host of different experimental and theoretical methods.
Links:
- Lanz et al: “Disinhibition of a recurrent attractor gates a persistent goal signal for navigation”, bioRxiv, 2025
- Kathman et al: “Neural dynamics for working memory and evidence integration during olfactory navigation in Drosophila”, bioRxiv (2025)
- Nagel & Wilson: “Biophysical mechanisms underlying olfactory receptor neuron dynamics”, Nature Neuroscience (2011)
- Homepage of the Nagel Lab
The podcast was recorded on March 29th, 2026 and lasts 1 hour and 25 minutes.
To become a Patreon supporter of the podcast, go to patreon.com/TheoreticalNeurosciencePodcast .
In addition to the access via the link above, the audio version of the podcast is also available through major podcast providers such as Apple, Spotify, and Amazon Music/Audible.