A descending contralateral directionally selective movement detector in the praying mantis Tenodera aridifolia

Extracellular recordings were made from a directionally selective neuron in the ventral nerve cord of mantises. The neuron’s preferred direction of motion was forward and upward over the compound eye contralateral to its axon at the cervical connective. The neuron was sensitive to wide-field motion stimuli, resistant to habituation, and showed transient excitation in response to light ON and OFF stimuli. Its responses to drifting gratings depended on the temporal frequency and contrast of the stimulus. These results suggest that the neuron receives input from correlation-type motion detectors.