Auditory Activity is Diverse and Widespread Throughout the Central Brain of Drosophila

Abstract

Sensory pathways are typically studied by starting at receptor neurons and following postsynaptic neurons into the brain. However, this leads to a bias in analysis of activity towards the earliest layers of processing. Here, we present new methods for volumetric neural imaging with precise across-brain registration, to characterize auditory activity throughout the entire central brain of Drosophila and make comparisons across trials, individuals, and sexes. We discover that auditory activity is present in most central brain regions and in neurons known to carry responses to other modalities. Auditory responses are temporally diverse, but the majority of activity, regardless of brain region, is tuned to aspects of courtship song. We find that auditory responses are stereotyped across trials and animals in early mechanosensory regions, becoming more variable at higher layers of the putative pathway, and that this variability is largely independent of spontaneous movements. This study highlights the power of using an unbiased, brain-wide approach for mapping the functional organization of sensory activity.