CAREER: Dissecting the Fundamental Components of Multi-input Response in Exploration and Navigation

理解物理系统的一个基本任务是确定输入是如何被接收、内部操作和转换为外部输出的。这个职业奖以类似的方式研究一种活的有机体--果蝇幼虫，目的是描述它简单的大脑和身体是如何运作来产生身体运动的。爬行的幼虫穿越受控环境，包括温度、振动和/或光照水平的变化，将用摄像机跟踪，并通过计算机视频分析精确确定它们的行为特征。这项研究将使用新的方法来预测动物在复杂温度环境中的行为，使用激光系统摧毁单个脑细胞并观察其对行为的影响，模拟爬行以将幼虫与物理模型进行比较，并确定幼虫如何同时处理多种输入。这些结果将提供更多关于生命系统如何在其环境中处理信息和执行重要行动的理解。这项研究还与教育和推广项目相结合，包括从世界各地的学生研究人员那里收集数据，在物理课程中进行幼虫项目，以及一个动物行为美术馆的装置，以接触到更广泛的K-12和公众观众。以循序渐进的方式彻底了解感觉运动变化的目标是，这些实验旨在为自由爬行的果蝇幼虫提供复杂的刺激功能，果蝇幼虫是行为量化、神经元审讯和操纵的理想动物。通过将整个动物对单一输入温度的反应描述为将输入映射到输出的数学预测函数，该小组将剖析支配探索性和导航性运动规则的基本输入元素，并剖析决定整体扩散和定向运动的基本输出元素。通过飞秒激光消融，该小组将有选择地消除输入电路元件的组合，并观察对行为的影响。他们还将观察整个动物对多种输入类型的反应：温度、可见光、机械振动和光遗传光。这个项目的工作将确定刺激电路中的多个单独的输入元件如何与内部参数相结合来产生行为。在自然环境中，动物必须同时对多种形式的输入做出反应，而对生命系统的充分理解需要综合处理，检查多种刺激、多个感觉神经元的回路以及个体的内部状态和偏见。拟议工作的完成将向科学界提供关于信息如何在生命系统中传播，以及多种输入如何相互作用以产生行为输出的详细特征。确定多个输入如何组合，特别是每个输入的权重如何取决于周围的条件和历史，将直接影响到更复杂的系统。研究将与一个创新的教育项目相结合，该项目将动物行为实验纳入物理课程，并将动物运动纳入艺术背景。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A fundamental task of understanding physical systems is to determine how inputs are received, manipulated inside, and transformed into external outputs. This CAREER award investigates a living organism, the fruit fly larva, in a similar way, with the goal of characterizing how its simple brain and body operate to produce physical movement. Crawling larva traversing controlled environments that include changing temperature, vibration, and/or light level will be tracked with cameras, and their behavioral features determined precisely with computer video analysis. The study will use new methods that seek to predict the animal’s behavior in complex temperature environments, use a laser system to destroy single brain cells and observe the effect on behavior, simulate crawling to compare the larva to physics models, and determine how the larva handles multiple kinds of inputs at once. The results together will provide greater understanding of how living systems process the information in their environments and perform important actions. The research is also paired with education and outreach programs, which includes gathering data from student researchers around the world doing larva projects in physics courses, and an animal behavior art museum installation to reach a broader K-12 and public audience.With the goal of thoroughly understanding sensorimotor transformations in a step-by-step fashion, the experiments are designed to deliver complex stimulus functions to freely crawling Drosophila larvae, ideal animals for behavioral quantification and neuronal interrogation and manipulation. By characterizing the whole-animal response to a single input, temperature, as mathematical, predictive functions that maps input to output, the group will dissect the basic input elements that govern the rules of exploratory and navigational motion, and dissect the essential output elements that determine the overall diffusive and directed movement. Through fs laser ablation the group will selectively eliminate combinations of input circuit elements and observe the effect on behavior. They will also observe the whole-animal response to multiple input types: temperature, visible light, mechanical vibration, and optogenetic light. The work in this project will determine how multiple individual input elements in a stimulus circuit combine with internal parameters to produce behavior. In natural contexts animals must respond to many forms of inputs simultaneously, and a full understanding of living systems requires a comprehensive treatment that examines multiple stimuli, multiple sensory neurons acting in a circuit, and internal states and biases of individuals. Completion of the proposed work will make available to the scientific community a detailed characterization of how information travels through a living system, and how multiple inputs interact with each other to produce behavioral output. Determining how multiple inputs combine and especially how the weight of each input depends on surrounding conditions and history, will have direct bearing on more complex systems. Research will be integrated with an innovative education program that brings animal behavior experiments to physical sciences curriculum, and brings animal motion to an art context.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.