{"doi":"10.1101/2021.09.23.461548","title":"A rise-to-threshold signal for a relative value deliberation","abstract":"Abstract Whereas progress has been made in identifying neural signals related to rapid, cued decisions 1–4 , less is known about how brains guide and terminate more ethologically relevant deliberations, where an animal’s own behavior governs the options experienced over minutes 5–8 . Drosophila search for many seconds to minutes for egg-laying sites with high relative value 9, 10 and neurons, called oviDNs , exist whose activity fulfills necessity and sufficiency criteria for initiating the egg-deposition motor program 11 . Here we show that oviDNs express a calcium signal that rises over seconds to minutes as a fly deliberates whether to lay an egg. The calcium signal dips when an egg is internally prepared (ovulated), rises at a rate related to the relative value of the current substrate being experienced, and reaches a consistent peak just prior to the abdomen bend for egg deposition. We provide perturbational evidence that the egg-deposition motor program is initiated once this signal hits a threshold and that sub-threshold variation in the signal regulates the time spent deliberating and, ultimately, the option chosen. These results argue that a rise-to-threshold signal guides Drosophila to lay eggs on substrate options with high relative value, with each egg-laying event representing a self-paced decision similar to real-world decisions made by humans and other mammals.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":214250,"datarank":0.37273599746820013,"base_score":2.4849066497880004,"endowment":2.4849066497880004,"self_citation_contribution":0.37273599746820013,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.37273599746820013,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9504,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":807669,"name":"Fei Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-8646-2411","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807670,"name":"Kaiyu Wang","orcid":"0000-0003-1474-8936","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807671,"name":"Arun K. Chakravorty","orcid":"0000-0003-2890-0855","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807672,"name":"Atsuko Adachi","orcid":"0000-0002-9758-6858","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807673,"name":"Hessameddin Akhlaghpour","orcid":"0000-0003-0475-7169","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553799,"name":"Barry J. Dickson","orcid":"0000-0003-0715-892X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":291996,"name":"Gaby Maimon","orcid":"0000-0003-1219-5856","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807668,"name":"Vikram Vijayan","orcid":"0000-0003-3948-7568","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":87,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:52:46.604690Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}