CAREER: Neural mechanisms of flexible sensorimotor processing in C. elegans

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The brain interprets the world around an organism to guide its actions and movements, but exactly how the brain does so remains a mystery. This CAREER award seeks to study how the brain of a small worm detects information about its environment and transforms that information into actions. The worm's small brain makes it possible to study the flow of information as it traverses through the brain with a level of detail and completeness that is not currently possible in other more complicated animals. The investigation uses new approaches that the principal investigator developed to record activity of the worm's brain as it crawls. The results of this study will provide new insights into how brains flexibly process information and generate actions. The work is integrated with a comprehensive education and outreach plan. In one component, hands-on workshops will be held for public policy students to learn about genetic engineering and machine learning, two cutting-edge technologies that enable the proposed research and also have the potential to transform society.The PI will investigate circuit-level mechanisms underlying sensorimotor processing in the nematode C. elegans. The animal flexibly interprets sensory signals to drive motor outputs dependent upon internal state. In some states an applied mechanosensory signal will propagate through the network to elicit a motor response, while in other states it will not. This project uses whole brain calcium imaging at cellular resolution in freely moving C. elegans to map out the functional paths by which the sensory signals propagate. Specifically, the work seeks to locate where in the network mechanosensory signals transition into locomotory signals, and to identify where state information impinges on this path using a whole-brain approach. C. elegans, with its compact nervous system of only 302 neurons, optical transparency, genetic tractability and mapped connectome is well-suited to carrying out the investigation. Education and outreach components of this research grant target students of public policy, undergraduate physics and engineering students especially from underrepresented groups, and undergraduate neuroscience students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.