Higher Brain Centers for Intelligent Motor Control in Insects

The higher control of orientation, walking and gap climbing behavior in the fruit fly Drosophila is studied by neurogenetic means. An insect brain model is presented for the control of object approaches. The model comprises learning abilities of flies at two different time scales. A short-term orientation memory allows for the continued approach of objects that disappeared from sight. Flies can come back to the still invisible object even after a detour to a distracter object. A long-term memory allows for the storage of experience with particular types of objects in order to trigger avoidance behavior in the future instead of the default approach behavior. Moreover, we provide evidence that the highly adaptive and successful locomotion of flies relies also on short-term integrators, motor learning, body size representation and adaptive termination of behavior.