Neural Network Model for Chemotaxis in C. elegans

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

PI: Lockery Abstract This project investigates the relationship between brain activity and behaviour in the nematode worm C. elegans. The behavior studies is chemotaxis, in which an animal finds a food item or other odor source by moving in the direction of the strongest smell. The main objective is to create a computer model of part of the nematode brain that converts chemical sensation into bodily movement. The model will be based on information obtained by many methods including laser surgery to eliminate individual neurons in the worm brain and electrical recordings from some of the smallest neurons known to science. Understanding how even a simple brain controls behaviour is important for two main reasons. First, to discover the causes of mental illness and other forms of abnormal behaviour, we must first understand how neurons and genes shape normal behaviour. In humans, which have a 100 billion neurons and about 100,000 genes, this is a daunting task. In the nematode, however, there are only 302 neurons and 19,000 genes, so progress there should be much quicker. Moreover, humans and nematodes share many of their genes, making nematode research directly applicable to humans. Second, this project should help us build a new generation of smaller, smarter, and cheaper computers by unraveling the computation secrets of the brain. Brains can process much more information per unit time that computers, and they do so using much less energy and space, but how this is done is a mystery. The simplicity of the nematode makes its computational mechanisms easier to understand.