Extended Data Fig. 6: Differential synaptic connectivity in VPNs manifests as synaptic gradients reflecting visual space map.
From: Synaptic gradients transform object location to action
a, Representative elbow plots from k-means clustering of individual cells within each VPN cell type (based on the number of synapses they make with postsynaptic partners). A drop in the within cluster sum of squared distance was used to determine the number of k in Fig. 4a, b (see Methods for details). b, Representative example of differential synaptic connectivity metric (median coefficient of variation) for LC4. Left: coefficient of variation in synapse number between individual neurons within LC4 population and top 25 postsynaptic partners of LC4 (ordered by decreasing variation). Right: summary (median CV, shown in red) metric for all postsynaptic partners of LC4 making >50 synapses total. c, Representative examples of graded synaptic connectivity between four VPN cell types and their top 15 postsynaptic partners based on the total number of synapses. Each individual neuron within a VPN cell type is assigned a color based on just one plot (DNp11 for LC4, Giant Fiber for LPLC2 etc.), with the colors preserved in other graphs. Every plot indicates the number of synapses between individual neurons within one VPN cell type and a given postsynaptic partner (arranged by descending number of synapses). d, Single LC4 neurons (EM-based connectome reconstructions) with dendrites in anterior (bodyID 1907587934) or posterior (bodyID 1249932198) regions of the lobula are highlighted. The remaining LC4 neurons shown in grey. e, Differential synaptic connectivity between two LC4 neurons from (d) and their top 25 postsynaptic partners (measured by total number of synapses). 15 out of 25 postsynaptic neurons receive preferential or exclusive input from either anterior or posterior LC4. f–g, Differential synaptic connectivity of individual LPLC2 neurons with dendrites in dorsal (bodyID 1815826155) vs ventral (bodyID 1815809293) lobula. Similar to (d, e). P, posterior; M, medial; D, dorsal; L, lateral.
