Several fundamental aspects of motion vision circuitry are prevalent across flies and mice. Both taxa segregate ON and OFF signals. For any given spatial pattern, motion detectors in both taxa are tuned to speed, selective for one of four cardinal directions, and modulated by catecholamine neurotransmitters. These similarities represent conserved, canonical properties of the functional circuits and computational algorithms for motion vision. Less is known about feature detectors, including how receptive field properties differ from the motion pathway or whether they are under neuromodulatory control to impart functional plasticity for the detection of salient objects from a moving background. Here, we investigated 19 types of putative feature selective lobula columnar (LC) neurons in the optic lobe of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to characterize divergent properties of feature selection. We identified LC12 and LC15 as feature detectors. LC15 encodes moving bars, whereas LC12 is selective for the motion of discrete objects, mostly independent of size. Neither is selective for contrast polarity, speed, or direction, highlighting key differences in the underlying algorithms for feature detection and motion vision. We show that the onset of background motion suppresses object responses by LC12 and LC15. Surprisingly, the application of octopamine, which is released during flight, reverses the suppressive influence of background motion, rendering both LCs able to track moving objects superimposed against background motion. Our results provide a comparative framework for the function and modulation of feature detectors and new insights into the underlying neuronal mechanisms involved in visual feature detection.

运动视觉电路的几个基本方面在果蝇和小鼠中普遍存在。两个类群都分离 ON 和 OFF 信号。对于任何给定的空间模式，两个类群中的运动探测器都会调整速度，选择性地选择四个基本方向之一，并受到儿茶酚胺神经递质的调节。这些相似之处代表了运动视觉的功能电路和计算算法的保守、规范属性。人们对特征检测器知之甚少，包括感受野特性与运动路径有何不同，或者它们是否受到神经调节控制，以赋予功能可塑性以检测移动背景中的显着物体。在这里，我们研究了果蝇果蝇视叶中 19 种假定的特征选择性小叶柱状 (LC) 神经元，以表征特征选择的不同特性。我们将 LC12 和 LC15 确定为特征检测器。 LC15 对移动条进行编码，而 LC12 对离散对象的运动有选择性，主要与大小无关。两者都没有对对比度极性、速度或方向进行选择性，突出了特征检测和运动视觉的底层算法的关键差异。我们发现背景运动的开始会抑制 LC12 和 LC15 的物体反应。令人惊讶的是，飞行过程中释放的章鱼胺的应用逆转了背景运动的抑制影响，使两个液晶显示器都能够跟踪叠加在背景运动上的移动物体。我们的结果为特征检测器的功能和调制提供了一个比较框架，并为视觉特征检测所涉及的潜在神经元机制提供了新的见解。