Focal neuronal loss and cell replacement in a connectome model of fly steering

Replacing 100 neurons after a 2,000-neuron lesion in a connectome-constrained Drosophila steering model restores simulated displacement to 62.5% of intact when motor-control pathways are prioritized.

• Why it matters: Persistent motor deficits after stroke or injury depend on which cells and connections must be restored, but experimentally pinpointing those requirements is difficult.
• What they did: A connectome-constrained spiking model decoded motor-neuron output for visually guided steering, then simulated neuron loss and cell replacement across 100 stochastic realizations.
• The result: With motor-control prioritization, displacement rises to 62.5% versus 10.1% after random 100-cell replacement and 48.5% after random 1,000-cell replacement; type-inferred replacements reach 60.0% with matched identities but only 6.7% with non-target identities.