Synergy of color and motion vision for detecting approaching objects in Drosophila

Abstract

Color and motion are used by many species to identify salient moving objects. They are processed largely independently, but color contributes to motion processing in humans, for example, enabling moving colored objects to be detected when their luminance matches the background. Here, we demonstrate an unexpected, additional contribution of color to motion vision in Drosophila. We show that behavioral ON-motion responses are more sensitive to UV than for OFF-motion, and we identify cellular pathways connecting UV-sensitive R7 photoreceptors to ON and OFF-motion-sensitive T4 and T5 cells, using neurogenetics and calcium imaging. Remarkably, the synergy of color and motion vision enhances the detection of approaching UV discs, but not green discs with the same chromatic contrast, and we show how this generalizes for visual systems with ON and OFF pathways. Our results provide a computational and circuit basis for how color enhances motion vision to favor the detection of saliently colored objects.