Neurogenetic Approaches to Study Directed Behavior in Drosophilla

项目概要： 长期目标是提供一个框架，以了解一个简单的，天生的行为是如何从 神经系统的活动。为此，分子遗传学技术，电生理学和成像 技术来研究果蝇的温度加工和偏好的机制-a 系统非常适合于神经回路和行为的全面遗传和分子解剖， 应用。该实验室最近的工作已经证明，一个简单的感觉地图代表温度刺激 在苍蝇的大脑里。它还表明，一个协调的二阶神经元集合提取信息， 从这张简单的地图上了解温度变化的符号，开始，大小和持续时间。这项研究是 现在建议深入研究使这种转变的细胞和分子机制， 可能期望这项工作的结果将揭示新的机制和原则， 神经系统中的躯体感觉处理，将补充差异特征的发现 提取在其他感官形式，并将有兴趣的影响，以更广泛的神经科学 社区，为神经回路内的信息处理工作提供信息。这项工作也有望 有助于对控制躯体感觉的神经回路的功能的一般理解 反应（温度和疼痛）的动物，可能提供有关遗传和神经学的见解 影响神经元兴奋性的病症，导致破坏性的医学病症，例如慢性疼痛。

PROJECT SUMMARY: The long term goal is to provide a framework to understand how a simple, innate behavior emerges from the activity of the nervous system. For this, molecular genetics techniques, electrophysiology and imaging technologies to study the mechanisms underlying temperature processing and preference in Drosophila -a system ideally suited for a comprehensive genetic and molecular dissection of neural circuits and behaviors, are applied. The lab's recent work has demonstrated that a simple sensory map represents temperature stimuli in the fly brain. It has also shown that a coordinated ensemble of second order neurons extracts information about the sign, onset, magnitude and duration of a temperature change from this simple map. The research is now proposing to delve deeper into the cellular and molecular mechanism that make this transformation possible. The expectation is that the results of this work will reveal new mechanisms and principles of somatosensory processing in the nervous system, will complement discoveries on differential feature extraction in other sensory modalities, and will have implications of interest to the broader neuroscience community, informing work on information processing within neural circuits. This work is also expected to contribute to the general understanding of the function of the neural circuits that control somatosensory responses (temperature and pain) in animals, potentially providing insights on genetic and neurological conditions which affect neuronal excitability resulting in devastating medical conditions such as chronic pain.