Acetylcholine from visual circuits modulates the activity of arousal neurons in Drosophila

NARA I MURARO; M. FERNANDA CERIANI

JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE

SOC NEUROSCIENCE

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2015 vol. 35 p. 16315 - 16327

0270-6474

Drosophila melanogaster´s large lateral ventral neurons (lLNvs) arepart of both, the circadian and sleep-arousal neuronal circuits. In the past,electrophysiological analysis revealed that lLNvs fire action potentials (AP)in bursting or tonic modes, and that the proportion of neurons firing in thosespecific patterns varies circadianly. In this paper we provide evidence thatlLNvs fire in bursts both during the day and at night, being the frequency ofbursting what is modulated in a circadian fashion. Moreover, we show that lLNvsAP firing is not only under cell autonomous control but also modulated by thenetwork, and in the process we develop a novel preparation to assess this. Wedemonstrate that lLNvs bursting mode relies on a cholinergic input, sinceapplication of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antagonists impairs this firingpattern. Finally, we found that bursting of lLNvs depends on an input fromvisual circuits that includes the cholinergic L2 monopolar neurons from thelamina. Our work sheds light on the physiological properties of lLNvs and on aneuronal circuit that may provide visual information to these important arousalneurons.