A combinatorial code of transcription factors specifies subtypes of visual motion-sensing neurons in Drosophila

AbstractCellular motion is fundamental in tissue development and homeostasis. There is strong interest in identifying factors that affect the interactions of cells in disease but analytical tools for robust and sensitive quantification in varying experimental conditions for large extended timelapse acquisitions is limited. We present Motion Sensing Superpixels (MOSES), a method to systematically capture diverse features of cellular dynamics. We quantify dynamic interactions between epithelial cell sheets using cell lines of the squamous and columnar epithelia in human normal esophagus, Barrett’s esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma and find unique boundary formation between squamous and columnar cells. MOSES also measured subtle changes in the boundary formation caused by external stimuli. The same conclusions of the 190 videos were arrived at unbiasedly with little prior knowledge using a visual motion map generated from unique MOSES motion ‘signatures’. MOSES is a versatile framework to measure, characterise and phenotype cellular interactions for high-content screens.

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A combinatorial code of maternal GATA, Ets and -catenin-TCF transcription factors specifies and patterns the early ascidian ectoderm

Development ◽

10.1242/dev.010850 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 134 (22) ◽

pp. 4023-4032 ◽

Cited By ~ 72

Author(s):

U. Rothbacher ◽

V. Bertrand ◽

C. Lamy ◽

P. Lemaire

Keyword(s):

Transcription Factors ◽

Combinatorial Code

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Model of human visual-motion sensing

Journal of the Optical Society of America A ◽

10.1364/josaa.2.000322 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 322 ◽

Cited By ~ 789

Author(s):

Andrew B. Watson ◽

Albert J. Ahumada

Keyword(s):

Visual Motion ◽

Motion Sensing

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Complementary mechanisms create direction selectivity in the fly

eLife ◽

10.7554/elife.17421 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

Cited By ~ 54

Author(s):

Juergen Haag ◽

Alexander Arenz ◽

Etienne Serbe ◽

Fabrizio Gabbiani ◽

Alexander Borst

Keyword(s):

Motion Detection ◽

Visual Motion ◽

Optic Lobe ◽

Direction Selectivity ◽

Neural Computation ◽

Directional Selectivity ◽

Motion Sensing ◽

Null Direction ◽

Preferred Direction ◽

High Degree

How neurons become sensitive to the direction of visual motion represents a classic example of neural computation. Two alternative mechanisms have been discussed in the literature so far: preferred direction enhancement, by which responses are amplified when stimuli move along the preferred direction of the cell, and null direction suppression, where one signal inhibits the response to the subsequent one when stimuli move along the opposite, i.e. null direction. Along the processing chain in the Drosophila optic lobe, directional responses first appear in T4 and T5 cells. Visually stimulating sequences of individual columns in the optic lobe with a telescope while recording from single T4 neurons, we find both mechanisms at work implemented in different sub-regions of the receptive field. This finding explains the high degree of directional selectivity found already in the fly’s primary motion-sensing neurons and marks an important step in our understanding of elementary motion detection.

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A combinatorial code of transcription factors specify dopaminergic neuron differentiation across phylogeny

Developmental Biology ◽

10.1016/j.ydbio.2010.05.038 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 344 (1) ◽

pp. 416-417

Author(s):

Oliver Hobert

Keyword(s):

Transcription Factors ◽

Dopaminergic Neuron ◽

Neuron Differentiation ◽

Combinatorial Code

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Fidelity of the Ensemble Code for Visual Motion in Primate Retina

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.01175.2004 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 94 (1) ◽

pp. 119-135 ◽

Cited By ~ 70

Author(s):

E. S. Frechette ◽

A. Sher ◽

M. I. Grivich ◽

D. Petrusca ◽

A. M. Litke ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Motion ◽

Ganglion Cells ◽

Temporal Structure ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Time Variability ◽

Motion Sensing ◽

Orthogonal Direction ◽

Population Activity ◽

Stimulus Speed ◽

The Brain

Sensory experience typically depends on the ensemble activity of hundreds or thousands of neurons, but little is known about how populations of neurons faithfully encode behaviorally important sensory information. We examined how precisely speed of movement is encoded in the population activity of magnocellular-projecting parasol retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in macaque monkey retina. Multi-electrode recordings were used to measure the activity of ∼100 parasol RGCs simultaneously in isolated retinas stimulated with moving bars. To examine how faithfully the retina signals motion, stimulus speed was estimated directly from recorded RGC responses using an optimized algorithm that resembles models of motion sensing in the brain. RGC population activity encoded speed with a precision of ∼1%. The elementary motion signal was conveyed in ∼10 ms, comparable to the interspike interval. Temporal structure in spike trains provided more precise speed estimates than time-varying firing rates. Correlated activity between RGCs had little effect on speed estimates. The spatial dispersion of RGC receptive fields along the axis of motion influenced speed estimates more strongly than along the orthogonal direction, as predicted by a simple model based on RGC response time variability and optimal pooling. on and off cells encoded speed with similar and statistically independent variability. Simulation of downstream speed estimation using populations of speed-tuned units showed that peak (winner take all) readout provided more precise speed estimates than centroid (vector average) readout. These findings reveal how faithfully the retinal population code conveys information about stimulus speed and the consequences for motion sensing in the brain.

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Motion Direction Discrimination with Tactile Random-Dot Kinematograms

i-Perception ◽

10.1177/20416695211004620 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 204166952110046

Author(s):

Scinob Kuroki ◽

Shin’ya Nishida

Keyword(s):

Motion Detection ◽

Visual Motion ◽

Discrimination Performance ◽

Sensory Function ◽

Human Observer ◽

Motion Sensing ◽

Motion Direction ◽

Low Level ◽

Direction Discrimination ◽

High Level

Motion detection is a fundamental sensory function for multiple modalities, including touch, but the mechanisms underlying tactile motion detection are not well understood. While previous findings supported the existence of high-level feature tracking, it remains unclear whether there also exist low-level motion sensing that directly detects a local spatio-temporal correlation in the skin-stimulation pattern. To elucidate this mechanism, we presented, on braille displays, tactile random-dot kinematograms, similar to those widely used in visual motion research, which enables us to independently manipulate feature trackability and various parameters of local motion. We found that a human observer is able to detect the direction of difficult-to-track tactile motions presented to the fingers and palms. In addition, the direction-discrimination performance was better when the stimuli were presented along the fingers than when presented across the fingers. These results indicate that low-level motion sensing, in addition to high-level tracking, contribute to tactile motion perception.

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