Data from: Consistent coordination patterns provide near perfect behavior decoding in a comprehensive motor program for insect flight

Precise spike timing encoding is present in many motor systems, but is not
frequently utilized to decode behavior or to examine how coordination is
achieved across many motor units. Furthermore, testing whether the same
coordinated sets of muscles control different movements is difficult
without a complete motor representation at the level of the currency of
control – action potentials. Here, we demonstrate nearly perfect decoding
of six hawk moth flight behavior states elicited in response to wide-field
drifting visual stimuli about the flight axes – pitch, roll, and yaw –
using a comprehensive, spike-resolved motor program. A simple linear
decoding pipeline is sufficient to predict behavior, but only if precise
timing information in included. We also demonstrate that as few as half
the muscles can be used to retain this near perfect decoding performance,
linking coordination to redundancy in encoding across the entire moth
flight motor program. We then use this comprehensive motor representation
to test if muscle covariation present in one pair of visual stimulus
conditions can be used to decode behavior in a different pair of visual
stimulus conditions. We find conserved muscle coordination patterns at the
level of motor unit spike timings in these functionally distinct
behaviors.