ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Matched-filter coding of sky polarization results in an internal sun compass in the brain of the desert locust.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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20 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
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- From skylight cues to magnetic fields: the toolkit of insect long-distance navigation.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- Neurons sensitive to sky compass signals in the brain of the Madeira cockroach Rhyparobia maderae.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
- The use of the skylight polarization gradient in young sandhopper's orientation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A computational model for angular velocity integration in a locust heading circuit.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Connectomic reconstruction predicts the functional organization of visual inputs to the navigation center of thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Neurons sensitive to non-celestial polarized light in the brain of the desert locust.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2023Article
- The influence of stimulus history on directional coding in the monarch butterfly brain.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2023Article
- The sky compass network in the brain of the desert locust.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2023Review
- Unraveling the neural basis of spatial orientation in arthropods.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2023Article
- Integration of optic flow into the sky compass network in the brain of the desert locust.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2023Article
- Generating spatiotemporal patterns of linearly polarised light at high frame rates for insect vision research.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Performance of polarization-sensitive neurons of the locust central complex at different degrees of polarization.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2022Article
- Receptive field structures for two celestial compass cues at the input stage of the central complex in the locust brain.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Rotation of skylight polarization during learning walks is necessary to trigger neuronal plasticity inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- A connectome of theeLife · 2021Article
- Compass Cue Integration and Its Relation to the Visual Ecology of Three Tribes of Ball-Rolling Dung Beetles.Insects · 2021Article
- Sun compass neurons are tuned to migratory orientation in monarch butterflies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Matched-filter coding of sky polarization results in an internal sun compass in the brain of the desert locust.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many animals use celestial cues for spatial orientation. These include the sun and, in insects, the polarization pattern of the sky, which depends on the position of the sun. The central complex in the insect brain plays a key role in spatial orientation. In desert locusts, the angle of polarized light in the zenith above the animal and the direction of a simulated sun are represented in a compass-like fashion in the central complex, but how both compasses fit together for a unified representation of external space remained unclear. To address this question, we analyzed the sensitivity of intracellularly recorded central-complex neurons to the angle of polarized light presented from up to 33 positions in the animal's dorsal visual field and injected Neurobiotin tracer for cell identification. Neurons were polarization sensitive in large parts of the virtual sky that in some cells extended to the horizon in all directions. Neurons, moreover, were tuned to spatial patterns of polarization angles that matched the sky polarization pattern of particular sun positions. The horizontal components of these calculated solar positions were topographically encoded in the protocerebral bridge of the central complex covering 360° of space. This whole-sky polarization compass does not support the earlier reported polarization compass based on stimulation from a small spot above the animal but coincides well with the previously demonstrated direct sun compass based on unpolarized light stimulation. Therefore, direct sunlight and whole-sky polarization complement each other for robust head direction coding in the locust central complex.
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