Mehmet Keles

On the left, the image shows a schematic of a fly head, ring neurons and EPG neurons together with some calcium imaging frames. On the right is a photo of a fly on a ball in virtual reality and another schematic of a VR system.

📢 Join us, the Haberkern lab, @uni-wuerzburg.de for a postdoc studying neural circuit mechanisms of navigation. You’ll spearheading neurophysiology experiments on our brand new 2P!

⏳ Apply by 28th February 2026

Details: www.haberkernlab.de/docs/ENPostd...

#neuroscience #academicjobs #postdoc

Schematic of how ER-EPG plasticity enables the bump of activity in EPGs to accurately track visual cues. As a fly makes a counter-clockwise turn (top to bottom) it will view visual cues (e.g. the sun) from a new angle and the EPG activity bump (red) will swing clockwise around the network by integrating self motion signals with these visual inputs. When the fly faces a different angle, distinct visual ER neurons are active. Plasticity forms a trough of weak synapses (large circles - strong synapses, small circles - weak synapses) that allow ER neurons with distinct visual tuning to move the EPG bump via disinhibition.

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!!
How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭
led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman:
“Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Thread ⬇️

How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm?

Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg.

w @bingbrunton.bsky.social

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

FlyBase secures funding for year, but future still uncertain The FlyBase team’s fundraising efforts have proven successful in the short term, but restoration of its federal grant remains uncertain.

There is still “an urgent need for donations from the community,” says Eric Lai, president of the Fly Board.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/community/fl...

That’s a sweet 3D printer!

Dynamics of glia and neurons regulate homeostatic rest, sleep and feeding behavior in Drosophila - Nature Neuroscience Animals alternate between active periods and periods of rest or sleep. This study in fruit flies points to brain metabolism as a cause for this and shows that a network of glial cells interacting with...

Dynamics of glia and neurons regulate homeostatic rest, sleep and feeding behavior in Drosophila 🧪🧠

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

There is 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 in the paper including brief descriptions of subtle but distinct oscillations of different body parts and structured leg twitches.

For more information on our setup, please check mfkeles.github.io/FlyVISTA/ and feel free to shoot me an e-mail.

For the other sleep related circuit (i.e. R5) please see the supplementary materials. That said, these results suggest how crucial it is to use 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 behavioral phenotyping with 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧 driver lines when it comes to sleep.

We also performed high resolution video recordings of commonly used drivers in the fly sleep field. Optogenetic activation of these drivers do not promote HS. However, we observed micromovements with the widely used driver R23E10 (an observation that was previously made by French et al., 2021)

In some cases, flies were unable to maintain normal posture which can be seen below.

We also tested the sleep inducing drug gaboxadol. Flies fed with gaboxadol had impaired locomotion and exhibited repeated proboscis extension behavior.

Flies were harder to arouse after HS suggesting that HS marks a distinct state. Furthermore, similar to how we open our eyes when we wake up, flies exhibited reversal of sleep related behaviors. Reverse HS prior to wakefulness followed by lifting of the antenna.

We looked at flies close, very close, to see if there are any subtle behaviors that might indicate their internal state (i.e. sleep). In addition to previously observed behaviors, we identified a novel one which we call "haltere switch" (HS).

FlyVISTA, an integrated machine learning platform for deep phenotyping of sleep in Drosophila A machine learning platform identifies and characterizes the dynamics of microbehaviors during fly sleep.

I am proud to share that our work of 4+ years has finally been published. We wondered if there are distinct behaviors that mark sleep in 🪰, where sleep has been defined as prolonged immobility.
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

can you give an example?