A Programmable Model for Exploring the Functional Logic of the Drosophila Mushroom Body

Abstract

We advance a model of the Mushroom Body of the Drosophila brain based on the recently published fruit fly brain connectome. We quantify the effect of the connectivity from antennal lobe projection neurons to Kenyon Cells (KCs) and the effect of feedback between KCs and the anterior paired lateral (APL) neuron on the representation of odorants at the KC level. We then characterize odorant representation in the mushroom body output neurons (MBONs) as a function of semantics represented by the dopaminergic neurons (DANs). Finally, we evaluate the performance of associative learning in the MB that endows pure odorants with DAN semantics.