Many animals navigate towards odor sources by combining olfactory cues with flow cues that
indicate the source direction. We have identified neural circuits in Drosophila that encode and integrate these two cues to promote navigation towards an odor source. We first show that two distinct pathways from the periphery to the fan-shaped body, a part of the insect navigation center, encode wind and odor cues respectively. Wind pathway neurons encode wind direction independent of odor, while odor pathway neurons encode odor independent of wind direction. Moreover, optogenetic activation of odor pathway neurons promotes upwind navigation. Within the fan-shaped body, we identify h∆C local neurons that receive input from both wind and odor pathways and encode an odor-gated wind direction signal. We show that h∆C activity is required for persistent upwind navigation, while sparse activation of h∆C neurons promotes navigation in a reproducible direction. A computational model based on connectivity motifs within the fan-shaped body can reproduce both of these phenotypes, and illustrates how h∆C activity can specify a goal direction for navigation. Ongoing work imaging from behaving flies aims to understand how h∆C activity evolves during navigation in complex odor environments.