Participating Lab: Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate (AFRL RW)

Modeling the Drosophila's decision-making neural circuitry

Research Opportunity Location:
Eglin AFB, FL

Research Opportunity Description:
Nature remains the master of using visual processing for real-time flight and decision-making. Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly) is able to evade predators, navigate geography for egg laying, and perform advanced aerial maneuvers, using a brain that consumes nanoWatts of power and only weighs milligrams
[1]. Compared to state of the art UAVs, this is exceptional, and a potential source of inspiration for improved systems
[2]. Research has been conducted to design neuromorphic hardware that mimics the hardware efficiency of the brain, and research is turning to the algorithmic details of how synaptic connectivity patterns and local neural dynamics enable intelligent sensing. Our branch is seeking a student to aid in tracing and reverse-engineering visual decision-making neural circuits in Drosophila melanogaster; followed by simulation of a constrained, biologically-plausible neural network for a real-world decision task such as fleeing in response to a looming predator
[3]. The candidate should be motivated to learn and work with our team of researchers and take some initiative in search of solutions. They should also have a working knowledge in Python and/or Julia on Ubuntu Linux.

Bibliography:
[1] The Physical Design of Biological Systems - Insights from the Fly Brain (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3439706.3446898)
[2] Insect-inspired neuromorphic computing (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2018.09.006)
[3] Multi-regional circuits underlying visually guided decision-making in Drosophila (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2020.10.010)
[4] Accelerating with FlyBrainLab the discovery of the functional logic of the Drosophila brain in the connectomic and synaptomic era (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.6236)