Independent Component Analysis of Flight Maneuvers in Tethered Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Independent Component Analysis of Flight Maneuvers in Tethered Drosophila melanogaster Soma Chakraborty1, Jan Bartussek2, Steven N. Fry2 and Martin Zapotocky1* 1 Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, Institute of Physiology, Czechia 2 University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Switzerland The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a key model organism for the study of animal behavior and its underlying neuromotor control. We developed a statistical method based on independent component analysis to classify the wing motion patterns of the fruit fly during tethered flight. The method identifies components of the wing motion that are maximally mutually independent; such components may be viewed as the basic control modes of the flight neuromotor system. Flies were tethered with a steel rod glued to their thorax and were stimulated to initiate wing flapping. Wing motion was recorded using a high speed computer vision system (TrackFast, SciTrackS.com) and its temporal variations were interpreted as attempted flight maneuvers. The angular positions of the left and right wing during dorsal and ventral reversals in each wing stroke were used as the four mixed signals for independent component analysis (ICA). To preserve and explore the non-stationarity of these signals, they were analyzed in segments of 2000 to 4000 wing strokes. Thus, the non-stationarity of the signal was transformed into the dissimilarity of the separating matrices from distinct segments. This dissimilarity was used to hierarchically cluster the corresponding independent components. The optimal number of clusters was determined by maximizing the silhouette cluster quality index value. In this clustering process, independent components obtained from similar linear combinations of the reversal angles but occurring during separate segments are grouped together. The most prominent cluster consists of independent components that are obtained predominantly from the difference of ventral reversal angles for the left and right wings. These components have sharp features at the time scale of 40 to 70 wingbeat cycles, and correspond to the well known fast turning maneuvers of flies, called body saccades. Another major group of components contains slower features (time scale of 200 to 500 wingbeat cycles) which are strongly correlated with wingbeat frequency. These two types of features are occasionally simultaneous and in the ICA resolve as two distinct components. Thus these features are controlled independently, which suggests the involvement of distinct synergies of the flight control muscles. Keywords: Independent Component Analysis, motor control, Non-stationary analysis, Tethered Flight Conference: BC11 : Computational Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Bernstein Conference & Neurex Annual Meeting 2011, Freiburg, Germany, 4 Oct - 6 Oct, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: motor control (please use "motor control" as keyword) Citation: Chakraborty S, Bartussek J, Fry SN and Zapotocky M (2011). Independent Component Analysis of Flight Maneuvers in Tethered Drosophila melanogaster. Front. Comput. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: BC11 : Computational Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Bernstein Conference & Neurex Annual Meeting 2011. doi: 10.3389/conf.fncom.2011.53.00182 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 22 Aug 2011; Published Online: 04 Oct 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Martin Zapotocky, Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, Institute of Physiology, Prague, Czechia, zapotocky@biomed.cas.cz Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Soma Chakraborty Jan Bartussek Steven N Fry Martin Zapotocky Google Soma Chakraborty Jan Bartussek Steven N Fry Martin Zapotocky Google Scholar Soma Chakraborty Jan Bartussek Steven N Fry Martin Zapotocky PubMed Soma Chakraborty Jan Bartussek Steven N Fry Martin Zapotocky Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.