The nematode C. elegans primarily senses its environment through smell and taste, and employs a variety of strategies to track the source of food odors. I will describe a series of experiments designed to quantitatively characterize these strategies, and to elucidate their basis in circuits in the nematode brain. By acutely silencing interneurons that are important for high-level control of chemotaxis behavior, we are able to draw connections between behavioral dynamics and underlying neural circuits. By performing experiments in a microfluidic arena with a well-defined odor profile, we are also able to connect these same behavioral dynamics to sensory input. We can develop a quantitative description of the behavior, that allows us to think of C. elegans chemotaxis as an inhomogeneous dynamical system. I will discuss several ideas for theoretical analysis stemming from this point of view.
Host: Ben Machta (benjamin.machta@yale.edu)