Decoding locomotion from population neural activity in moving C. elegans
- Princeton University, United States
- CAESER, Germany
Abstract
We investigated the neural representation of locomotion in the nematode C. elegans by recording population calcium activity during movement. We report that population activity more accurately decodes locomotion than any single neuron. Relevant signals are distributed across neurons with diverse tunings to locomotion. Two largely distinct subpopulations are informative for decoding velocity and curvature, and different neurons’ activities contribute features relevant for different aspects of a behavior or different instances of a behavioral motif. To validate our measurements, we labeled neurons AVAL and AVAR and found that their activity exhibited expected transients during backward locomotion. Finally, we compared population activity during movement and immobilization. Immobilization alters the correlation structure of neural activity and its dynamics. Some neurons positively correlated with AVA during movement become negatively correlated during immobilization and vice versa. This work provides needed experimental measurements that inform and constrain ongoing efforts to understand population dynamics underlying locomotion in C. elegans.
Data availability
Data associated with this manuscript has been deposited in a publicly accessible repository hosted by the Open Science Foundation at DOI:10.17605/OSF.IO/DPR3H
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Calcium activity recordings and behaviors assocated wtih the manuscriptOpen Science Foundation, DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/R5TB3.
Article and author information
Author details
Anuj Kumar Sharma Ph.D.
Andrew Michael Leifer
Funding
National Science Foundation (IOS-1845137)
- Andrew Michael Leifer
National Science Foundation (PHY-1734030)
- Joshua W Shaevitz
- Andrew Michael Leifer
National Institutes of Health (MH065214)
- Ashley Linder
Simons Foundation (324285)
- Andrew Michael Leifer
Swartz Foundation
- Francesco Randi
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Ronald L Calabrese, Emory University, United States
Version history
- Preprint posted: October 17, 2018 (view preprint)
- Received: December 29, 2020
- Accepted: July 26, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: July 29, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: September 14, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Hallinen et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Decoding locomotion from population neural activity in moving C. elegans
eLife 10:e66135.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66135
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