Chris J Dallmann

The first full central nervous system connectome dataset of an adult fly, with the most comprehensive annotation of sensory and motor neurons to date.

A heroic effort with contributions from many groups, a product of the collaborative spirit of the Drosophila neuroscience community.

a baby wearing a black space racer shirt ALT: a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

Preprint Alert! Walking mostly feels natural and easy to us - but the neuronal control of walking is actually incredibly complex. We leveraged the fruit fly as a genetically tractable animal model with a compact nervous system to ask how the brain controls walking direction: tinyurl.com/flywalk. 🧵..

Breaking the jar: Why NeuroAI needs embodiment Brain function is inexorably shaped by the body. Embracing this will benefit computational models of real brain function and the design of ANNs.

Embodiment is the concept that the function of the brain is inexorably shaped by the body, a lens that is often neglected when neuroscientists study specific brain subsystems, write @bingbrunton.bsky.social and @tuthill.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence #neuroai

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/brea...

new preprint, led by @ellenlesser.bsky.social, on proprioceptive sensing of the Drosophila wing. tldr, there are a lot of proprioceptors out in the wing and they are wildly diverse and complex (eg, compared to the fly leg). just one example in this image...(1/4)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to contribute imaging data to this project! The axons of these sensory neurons showed beautiful calcium signals in the nerve cord when the fly's leg joints reached the limits of their movement range. Check out the full story!

Excited to share my PhD paper is out! We studied how motion vision is processed beyond the optic lobes to help flies walk straight. It has been a wonderful collaboration with @michaelreiser.bsky.social, @dddavi.bsky.social and many others not in bluesky!
Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...

Divergent neural circuits for proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensing of the Drosophila leg Nature Communications - Determining whether somatosensory neurons are involved in internal or external sensing remains a challenge. Here, the authors show that analyzing connectivity is a powerful...

Happy to announce that our paper examining the function of leg mechanosensory neurons by way of their connectivity is finally officially published! rdcu.be/ekqVt

Yay - the extensive review Ansgar Büschges and I wrote on insect motor control and the many things insects can teach us about our own nervous systems just came out in Physiological Reviews @apsphysiology.bsky.social. Check it out - it's free: journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10....

Accepting “bitter lesson” and embracing brain’s complexity To gain insight into complex neural data, we must move toward a data-driven regime, employing large models trained on vast amounts of data. Experts weigh in.

The brain is incredibly complex. How do we analyze the growing and massive datasets to create a general model of neural computation?

Eva Dyer and @tyrellturing.bsky.social share their perspective on what needs to happen next in @thetransmitter.bsky.social.

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/acce...

Excited to present my #HorizonEU MSCA project with @jan-ache.bsky.social at the @neurowissg.bsky.social meeting in Göttingen. If you're interested in how brain circuits control locomotion, come chat with me at poster T23-6C on Friday. #NWG2025 #Drosophila

Computing Cords: Sensorimotor Control by Nerve Cord Circuits Across Species Organizers Salil Bidaye, Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience Ansgar Büschges, University of Cologne Graziana Gatto, University of Cologne Abdel El Manira, Karolinska Institutet Julie

Registration started for the Janelia meeting on spinal cord and brainstem circuits for sensorimotor adaptation across species. Spinal cord is more than a hub, it does supercomputing!
www.janelia.org/you-janelia/...

I wrote a piece for @thetransmitter.bsky.social about why I love participating in experimental summer courses, particularly @nsb-mbl.bsky.social.

www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...