相关论文: Limit-cycle-based control of the myogenic wingbeat…
Tiny flying insects, such as Drosophila melanogaster, fly by flapping their wings at frequencies faster than their brains are able to process. To do so, they rely on self-oscillation: dynamic instability, leading to emergent oscillation,…
Computational models are critical to advance our understanding of how neural, biomechanical, and physical systems interact to orchestrate animal behaviors. Despite the availability of near-complete reconstructions of the Drosophila…
Handedness in humans - better performance using either the left or right hand - is personally familiar, moderately heritable, and regulated by many genes, including those involved in general body symmetry. But behavioral handedness, i.e.…
Synchronization of self-sustained oscillators under fixed-frequency and amplitude forcing is well understood, but how time-varying forcing mangles phase locking has been much less explored. Theory predicts that slow, deterministic…
Compared with fixed-wing flight, flapping flight can generate a higher lift and is also more maneuverable, largely resulting from the benefits of wing rotation. By analyzing the real wing kinematics of fruit flies, we found that the wing…
Flapping insect flight is a complex and beautiful phenomenon that relies on fast, active control mechanisms to counter aerodynamic instability. To directly investigate how freely-flying D. melanogaster control their body pitch angle against…
In many insect species, the thoracic structure plays a crucial role in enabling flight. In the dipteran indirect flight mechanism, the thorax acts as a transmission link between the flight muscles and the wings, and it is often thought to…
Limit cycles are self-sustained, closed trajectories in phase space representing (un)-stable, periodic behavior in nonlinear dynamical systems. They underpin diverse natural phenomena, from neuronal firing patterns to engineering…
During organogenesis, developmental programs governed by Gene Regulatory Networks (GRN) define the functionality, size and shape of the different constituents of living organisms. Robustness, thus, is an essential characteristic that GRNs…
Even the simplest of animals exhibit behavioral sequences with complex temporal dynamics. Prominent amongst the proposed organizing principles for these dynamics has been the idea of a hierarchy, wherein the movements an animal makes can be…
We introduce and analyze a class of neural network models motivated by the Drosophila central complex nervous system, designed to capture the emergence and dynamics of orientation-selective activity bumps. Starting from a biologically…
In the early stages of development, Drosophila melanogaster embryos possess very fast and well-coordinated cell cycles. In the cell cycle, CDK activity is essentially regulated by binding CDK and CycB to form an active complex and by…
The Drosophila melanogaster white-eyed w1118 line serves as a blank control, allowing genetic recombination of any gene of interest along with a readily recognizable marker. w1118 flies display behavioral susceptibility to environmental…
Stick insect stepping patterns have been studied for insights about locomotor rhythm generation and control, because the underlying neural system is relatively accessible experimentally and produces a variety of rhythmic outputs. Harnessing…
Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…
Insects use flight muscles attached at the base of the wings to produce impressive wing flapping frequencies. The maximum power output of these flight muscles is insufficient to maintain such wing oscillations unless there is good elastic…
Saving energy and enhancing performance are secular preoccupations shared by both nature and human beings. In animal locomotion, flapping flyers or swimmers rely on the flexibility of their wings or body to passively increase their…
Our understanding of the neural basis of locomotor behavior can be informed by careful quantification of animal movement. Classical descriptions of legged locomotion have defined discrete locomotor gaits, characterized by distinct patterns…
We present a theory of pattern formation in growing domains inspired by biological examples of tissue development. Gradients of signaling molecules regulate growth, while growth changes these graded chemical patterns by dilution and…
Insects exhibit remarkable cognitive skills in the field and several cognitive abilities have been demonstrated in Drosophila in the laboratory. By devising an ethologically relevant experimental setup that also allows comparison of…