How Flies Fly

Abstract

Like all forms of locomotion, flight behavior results from a complex set of interactions, not just within circuits in the brain, but among neurons, muscles, skeletal elements, and physical process within the external world. To control flight, the fly's nervous system must generate a code of motor information that plays out through a small but complicated set of power and steering muscles. These muscles induce microscopic oscillations in an external skeleton that drive the wings back and forth 200 times each second producing a time-variant pattern of aerodynamic forces that the fly modulates to steer and maneuver through the air. The animal's motion through space alters the stream of information that runs through an array of visual, chemical, and mechanical sensors, which collectively provide feedback to stabilize flight and orient the animal towards specific targets. The goal of the research in my laboratory is to 'reverse engineer' this flight control system, and thus determine the means by which the nervous system controls the animal's trajectory through space.

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