Connectivity establishes spatial readout of visual looming in a glomerulus lacking retinotopy

Abstract

Visual systems can exploit spatial correlations in the visual scene by using retinotopy, the organizing principle by which neighboring cells encode neighboring spatial locations. However, retinotopy is often lost, such as when visual pathways are integrated with other sensory modalities. How is spatial information processed in the absence of retinotopy? Here, we focused on visual looming responsive LC6 cells in Drosophila, a population whose dendrites collectively tile the visual field, but whose axons form a single glomerulus—a structure lacking retinotopic organization—in the central brain. We identified multiple glomerulus neurons and found that they respond to looming in different portions of the visual field, unexpectedly preserving spatial information. Through EM reconstruction of all LC6 synaptic inputs to the glomerulus, we found that LC6 and downstream cell types form circuits within the glomerulus that establish spatial readout of visual features and contralateral suppression—mechanisms that transform visual information for behavioral control.