As connectomics advances, it will become commonplace to know far more about the structure of a nervous system than about its function. The starting point for many investigations will become neuronal wiring diagrams, which will be interpreted to make theoretical predictions about function. Here I demonstrate this emerging approach with the Drosophila optic lobe, analysing its structure to predict that three Dm3 (refs. ^1,2,3,4) and three TmY (refs. ^2,4) cell types are part of a circuit that serves the function of form vision. Receptive fields are predicted from connectivity, and suggest that the cell types encode the local orientation of a visual stimulus. Extraclassical^5,6 receptive fields are also predicted, with implications for robust orientation tuning⁷, position invariance^8,9 and completion of noisy or illusory contours^10,11. The TmY types synapse onto neurons that project from the optic lobe to the central brain^12,13, which are conjectured to compute conjunctions and disjunctions of oriented features. My predictions can be tested through neurophysiology, which would constrain the parameters and biophysical mechanisms in neural network models of fly vision¹⁴.

随着连接组学的进步，对神经系统结构的了解远多于对其功能的了解将变得司空见惯。许多研究的起点将是神经元布线图，这些图将被解释以对功能做出理论预测。在这里，我用果蝇视叶演示了这种新兴的方法，分析了其结构以预测三个 Dm3 （参考文献。^1,2,3,4）和三个 TmY（参考文献。^2,4） 细胞类型是具有形式视觉功能的电路的一部分。感受野是通过连接来预测的，并表明细胞类型编码视觉刺激的局部方向。还预测了超经典^5,6 感受野，对稳健方向调整⁷、位置不变性^8,9 和噪声或虚幻轮廓的完成^10,11 有影响。TmY 型突触位于从视叶投射到中枢脑的神经元^{上 12,13，这些}神经元被推测为计算定向特征的合取和析取。我的预测可以通过神经生理学来测试，这将限制苍蝇视觉¹⁴ 神经网络模型中的参数和生物物理机制。