Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 34: Neuroscience

BP 34.9: Talk

Thursday, March 15, 2018, 17:15–17:30, H 1058

Predicting animal behavior from neural dynamics — •Monika Scholz, Ashley N. Linder, and Andrew M. Leifer — Department of Physics and Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton, NJ, USA

How does a nervous system control animal behavior? While models of behavior and neural computation exist, investigating the connection experimentally is challenging in even the simplest organisms. It is only recently that tools have become available to image the behavior and neural dynamics simultaneously in the roundworm C. elegans. Its small nervous system with only 302 neurons and stereotyped behaviors allow us to probe how well simple models perform in predicting behavior from neural dynamics alone. We use a suite of microscopy tools and a calcium-sensitive fluorescent protein to image the activity of a large number of neurons in the animal’s brain during locomotion. Using a linear model, we predict forward and backward velocity as well as turns and turn direction from neural activity. I will show our progress and discuss the implications for understanding neural computation in a model organism.