Huayi Wei
Graduate Student
huayi.wei@nyu.edu
Education
2013. University College London (UCL), UK. BSc.
Interests
To perceive our movements relative to the surrounding environment, we need feedback on global motion of the visual scene. In flies, global visual motion is encoded by specific types of neurons – the Lobula Plate Tangential Cells (LPTCs). There are several known LPTC subtypes, each of which responds to specific behaviorally relevant visual motion. Nevertheless, the varieties of LPTCs described in Drosophila is much less than that in blowfly. Through a Gal4 driver screening, I identified previously undescribed Drosophila LPTC subtypes. In addition to defining their morphologies, I am characterizing their pre- and post-synaptic organization and neurotransmitter expression. We are investigating their response to visual motion through patch-clamp experiments, which will identify for which self-motion they are providing visual feedback. The discovery of novel LPTCs subtypes in Drosophila will allow us to understand the visual processing involved in broad field motion.