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.

A rise-to-threshold signal for a relative value deliberation