email: FRYE@PHYSCI.UCLA.EDU
phone: (310) 825-5360
office: PHYSIOLOGICAL SCIENCE DEPT 2804 LIFE SCIENCE BUILDING
homepage: http://www.physci.ucla.edu/research/frye
research interests: Integrative physiology of insect flight.
Research Interests
General introduction How are flexible and robust animal behaviors orchestrated by the nervous system? Different forms of this general question have occupied neuroscientists for decades. Great strides have been made toward describing the elements of nervous system development, structure, and function. Our next challenge is to examine how behavior emerges from the interactions among genetic, cellular, cell-system, and organ-system levels of organization. My laboratory studies these interactions in a powerful model system – the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Whereas research with Drosophila is most often focused within the molecular-genetic spectrum of modern biology, this animal also shows remarkable behavioral performance, making its living navigating vast distances through complex visual landscapes in search of the source of an attractive odor. A fly’s sophisticated navigation capabilities emerge from the fusion of multiple sensory modalities and transformation of a robust motor code. By combining the rapidly expanding toolkit of fruit fly molecular genetics with state-of-the-art engineering techniques, we hope to reveal the functional mechanisms and structural circuits with which the fly brain coordinates the biomechanics and dynamics of complex behavior. The results of this cross-disciplinary approach could have broad impact on our understanding of the general principles of sensory fusion and sensory-motor integration common among animal taxa, and also motivate specialized technical advances in bio-inspired robotic devices. Sensory fusion and sensorimotor integration in Drosophila Whereas visual motion processing and olfactory discrimination have been studied independently and in great depth in several prominent model systems including fruit flies, how these sensory cues are integrated to modify the motor control of behavior has received less attention. My laboratory approaches this challenge by combining behavioral, psychophysical, electrophysiological, and genetic techniques. We focus on three broad questions: (1) How are variations in the spatial and temporal structure of the visual world transformed into motor commands for walking or flight? (2) How are motor commands influenced by the integration or “fusion” of input from multiple sensory modalities? (3) What are the physiological mechanisms and anatomical loci of multi-sensory fusion and sensory-motor integration? To address these questions, we integrate four complimentary experimental techniques: (1) electronic “virtual reality” flight simulators for individual animals operating under natural feedback conditions, (2) a visual “treadmill” outfitted with a real-time video tracking system that monitors the spatial distribution of large groups of waling flies in response to visual, thermal, or olfactory stimuli, (3) electrophysiological recordings from the central nervous system and flight muscles, and (4) molecular-genetics to target the expression of reporter and effector genes within the brain.
Selected Publications
Duistermars, B.J. and Frye, M.A.. 2008. Cross-modal visual input for odor tracking during fly flight Curr Biol 18 270-275 .
Theobold, J.C., Duistermars, B.J., Ringach, D.L. and Frye, M.A.. 2008. Flies see second-order motion Curr Biol 18 R464-R465 .
Theobold, J.C. and Frye, M.A.. 2008. Animal Behavior: Flying back to front Curr Biol 18 R169-R170 .
Frye, M.A.. 2007. Behavioral Neurobiology: A vibrating gyroscope controls fly steering maneuvers Current Biology 17 134-136 .
Reynolds, A. and Frye, M.A.. 2007. Free-flight odor tracking in Drosophila is consistent with a mathematically optimal intermittent scale-free search PLoS ONE 2 e354- .
Frye, M.A.. 2007. The neuromechanics of fly flight control Invertebrate Neurobiology (ed. North, G. and Greenspan, R.) - (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, ) .
Duistermars, B.J., Reiser, M., Zhu, Y. and Frye, M.. 2007. Dynamic Properties of large-field and smaill-field optomotor flight responses in Drosophila J. Comp Physiol 193 787-799 .
Frye, M.A. and Dickinson M.H.. 2007. Visual edge orientation shapes free-flight behavior in Drosophila Fly 3 153-154 .
Duistermars, B.J., Chow, D., Condro, M. and Frye, M.A.. 2007. The spatial, temporal and contrast properties of expansion and rotation flight optomotor responses in Drosophila J Exp Biol 210 3218-3227 .
Frye, M.A., and J. Gray. 2005. Mechanosensory integration for flight control in insectsin Advances in Insect Sensory Neuroscience (ed. T. Christensen) - (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL) .