{"id":213052,"date":"2025-05-02T03:05:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T08:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/how-fruit-flies-neurons-spot-tiny-visual-errors-to-keep-them-flying-straight"},"modified":"2025-05-02T03:05:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T08:05:17","slug":"how-fruit-flies-neurons-spot-tiny-visual-errors-to-keep-them-flying-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/how-fruit-flies-neurons-spot-tiny-visual-errors-to-keep-them-flying-straight","title":{"rendered":"How fruit flies\u2019 neurons spot tiny visual errors to keep them flying straight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-fruit-flies-neurons-spot-tiny-visual-errors-to-keep-them-flying-straight.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When a fruit fly is navigating straight forward at high speed, why does it know that it\u2019s not straying off course? Because as long as the fly moves directly forward, the visual scene shifts from front to back in a near-perfect mirror image across both retinas\u2014generating, in other words, a symmetrical visual motion pattern. This pattern, known as \u201coptic flow,\u201d provides a powerful cue for detecting self-motion and maintaining direction.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, at high speeds, as soon as the fly starts deviating from its straight-ahead course even slightly, the optic flow becomes less symmetrical. But the high level of translational symmetry due to the fly\u2019s high-speed forward motion could mask smaller binocular asymmetries caused by slight rotational inflections in its trajectory.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, detecting such \u201cerrors\u201d and correcting them at the motor level is not trivial and must happen very quickly. Only then will the fly ensure it continues to move straight forward, as intended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a fruit fly is navigating straight forward at high speed, why does it know that it\u2019s not straying off course? Because as long as the fly moves directly forward, the visual scene shifts from front to back in a near-perfect mirror image across both retinas\u2014generating, in other words, a symmetrical visual motion pattern. This [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}