Neuromuscular Building Blocks for Limb Control and Motor Learning

Ziel

Animals move far more robustly and flexibly than even state-of-the-art robots. We propose that this is largely due to the intelligent deployment and dynamic recruitment of neuromuscular pathways driving elemental movements known as motor primitives. Until now, it has been impossible to deeply uncover these neuromuscular pathways due to the difficulty of comprehensively investigating and modeling neuromuscular systems in behaving animals. In NeuroPRIME, we will overcome this barrier to uncover neuromuscular mechanisms and algorithmic principles underlying limb control and motor learning.

We will achieve this goal by studying the adult fly, Drosophila melanogaster, an animal that generates complex limb-dependent behaviors and whose motor system connectivity has recently been fully mapped. With the fly, we also have access to hundreds of transgenic driver lines that target identified neuronal types for recordings and perturbations. Finally, my laboratory has pioneered tools for measuring limb kinematics and muscle activity, recording motor circuits at high volume-rate during behavior, modeling neuromechanics, and has designed a new assay to study fly motor learning.

We will leverage these tools to discover how progressively complex innate and learned limb-dependent behaviors are controlled. First, we will uncover the neuromuscular mechanisms that build a reaching movement (Aim 1). Next, we will reveal how neuromuscular pathways can be combined to generate cyclical grooming (Aim 2). Then, we will discover how cycle-generating networks can be modulated by leg mechanosensory feedback to navigate obstacles (Aim 3). Finally, we will show how ensembles of neuromuscular networks can be reconfigured when flies learn to manipulate objects (Aim 4). These efforts will yield concrete circuit mechanisms and algorithmic principles for limb motor control, discoveries that can inspire the design of more robust, efficient, and flexible controllers for neuroprosthetics and robots.

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