Visual control of orientation behaviour in the fly: Part II. Towards the underlying neural interactions

Abstract

Visual information processing in the nervous system of flies begins with a large array of photoreceptors, which transduce a light intensity pattern, and culminates in a behavioural response that depends on that pattern. In the previous paper we have given a quantitative description of visual control of flight orientation in the fly. This description can account for fixation, tracking and some instances of spontaneous pattern preference behaviour. The phenomenological theory outlines the basic logical organization of the visual control system of the fly. It requires the neural network between the receptors and the flight muscles to perform two main computations on the visual input. One computation extracts movement information (the term r(ψ)ψ b of the phenomenological equation). The other provides position information (the term D(ψ)).