Project description
Understanding mechanisms of brain-wide control of environmental behaviour
Large-scale neuronal activity recordings have revealed that widespread neuronal activity patterns across the brain encode movement parameters. The brain-wide behavioural representations are also implicated in sensory processing. These findings are universal across the animal kingdom from worms to mammals, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. The ERC-funded elegansBrainBodyEnvi project will use roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as an animal model to apply a combination of brain-wide, single-cell resolution Ca2+-imaging and genetic manipulation in freely behaving animals. The study in worms provides an opportunity to elucidate the universal functions of brain-wide behavioural representations. The goal is to establish fundamental principles and formulate working hypotheses for future studies in more complex model organisms and brains.
Objective
Recent large-scaRecent large-scale neuronal activity recordings in awake, behaving animals revealed a new, unexpected neuroscientific principle: widespread neuronal activity patterns across the brain encode parameters of movement. Surprisingly, these brain-wide behavior representations even extend to areas that are implicated in the processing of sensory information (e.g. the visual cortex in mice). Thus, a large fraction of the brains activity seems to be dedicated to representing the animals current, ongoing behavior. These observations have been made across the animal kingdom including worms, flies and mammals, suggesting a universal principle; however, the underlying mechanisms and functions remain unknown. In this proposal, we take advantage of the tractable model organism C. elegans to tackle this problem, combining brain-wide single cell resolution Ca2+-imaging in freely behaving animals with genetic circuit manipulation tools. It was previously recognized that the brain operates in a closed loop, actively sensing its body and its environment and making predictions of movement outcomes to optimally control behavior. Here, we propose to reconcile these long-standing concepts with the new observations of brain-wide behavior representations. Our core hypothesis is that sensory to motor transformation is a distributed process incorporating multiple functions like gain-control, re-afference prediction and predictive processing. Our team is at the forefront of scientific innovation and discoveries in this field, and we thereby are making substantial contributions to this currently ongoing paradigm shift in our understanding of how the brain operates. Studying these phenomena in worms offers a unique and timely opportunity to rapidly uncover the universal functions of brain wide behavioral representations. We therefore aim to make fundamental predictions and to formulate new working hypotheses for similar studies in larger model organisms with more complex brains.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2021-ADG
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1010 Wien
Austria
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