Speaker
Description
Learning from social feedback is fundamental for flexible behavior across species, and deficits in such flexibility can impair social wellbeing. To investigate the neural basis of social flexibility, we studied male Drosophila melanogaster, whose quantifiable social behavior and genetic accessibility offer a tractable vertebrate‑relevant model. Building on prior work showing that past social experience influences male courtship behavior, we developed a novel framework to test how distinct forms of social feedback from female flies shape the function of courtship-related neurons in males.
We created “alternate social realities” by pairing males with females that either displayed atypical backward-walking responses to an approaching male (using closed-loop optogenetic activation of neurons driving female backward walking), or behaved normally. Following these experiences, we characterized the function of specific male neurons, using a novel approach: optogenetic neural stimulation with stochastic light patterns (covering a broad range of neural dynamics) paired with automated behavioral identification to uncover the neurons’ roles across the full behavioral repertoire.
Males exposed to backward-walking females showed altered neural-behavior mappings in key courtship-driving neurons, requiring different stimulation patterns to elicit comparable behaviors relative to controls – indicating experience-dependent neural plasticity.
This integrative approach – combining real‑time behavioral tracking, closed‑loop neural manipulation, stochastic optogenetic profiling, and behavioral classification – demonstrates how past social experience modulates neural dynamics to guide future interactions. By modeling how individuals update internal representations in response to social feedback, this work introduces a novel system for studying the neural basis of adaptive social behavior.
