Larry Abbott, Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University
How flies do vector computations
Many tasks, especially those associated with movement and navigation, require the manipulation of vectors. I will describe collaborative work with Gaby Maimon and Cheng Lyu explaining how the Drosophila brain performs vector computations. Specifically, flies compute and represent the direction they are traveling in reference to external cues, such as the sun, correcting for drift. The vectors needed for this computation are represented, rotated and added as phasors - sinusoidal patterns of activity with amplitudes and phases that match the lengths and angles of the corresponding vectors. Thus, flies perform the types of vector calculations often assigned in introductory physics and math classes, but they do this in ways that are not typically taught in such courses.