The Neuroanatomical Ultrastructure and Function of a Biological Ring Attractor - Electron microscopy reconstructions and synapses

The skeletons and synapses for the single, central complex Drosophila neurons featured in the The Neuroanatomical Ultrastructure and Function of a Biological Ring Attractor are pickled here. This data can also be obtained from the FAFB dataset (https://temca2data.org/), but is included here for convenience.Analysis code can be found at https://github.com/KrisJensen/EMpaperRelated materials in the collection:One color calcium imaging data: https://doi.org/10.25378/janelia.12490373Kir perturbation calcium imaging data: https://doi.org/10.25378/janelia.12490325Shi perturbation calcium imaging data: https://doi.org/10.25378/janelia.12490313Two color calcium imaging data: https://doi.org/10.25378/janelia.12490274Behavioral data for the perturbation experiments: https://doi.org/10.25378/janelia.12490070Dataset supports the publication:Turner-Evans, D. B., Jensen, K. T., Ali, S., Paterson, T., Sheridan, A., Ray, R. P., Wolff, T., Lauritzen, J. S., Rubin, G. M., Bock, D. D., & Jayaraman, V. (2020). The Neuroanatomical Ultrastructure and Function of a Biological Ring Attractor. Neuron, 108(1), 145-163.e10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.08.006AbstractNeural representations of head direction (HD) have been discovered in many species. Theoretical work has proposed that the dynamics associated with these representations are generated, maintained, and updated by recurrent network structures called ring attractors. We evaluated this theorized structure-function relationship by performing electron-microscopy-based circuit reconstruction and RNA profiling of identified cell types in the HD system of Drosophila melanogaster. We identified motifs that have been hypothesized to maintain the HD representation in darkness, update it when the animal turns, and tether it to visual cues. Functional studies provided support for the proposed roles of individual excitatory or inhibitory circuit elements in shaping activity. We also discovered recurrent connections between neuronal arbors with mixed pre- and postsynaptic specializations. Our results confirm that the Drosophila HD network contains the core components of a ring attractor while also revealing unpredicted structural features that might enhance the network’s computational power.