Changes in Postural Syntax Characterize Sensory Modulation and Natural Variation of C. elegans Locomotion

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Abstract

Locomotion is driven by shape changes coordinated by the nervous system through time; thus, enumerating an animal's complete repertoire of shape transitions would provide a basis for a comprehensive understanding of locomotor behaviour. Here we introduce a discrete representation of behaviour in the nematode C. elegans. At each point in time, the worm’s posture is approximated by its closest matching template from a set of 90 postures and locomotion is represented as sequences of postures. The frequency distribution of postural sequences is heavy-tailed with a core of frequent behaviours and a much larger set of rarely used behaviours. Responses to optogenetic and environmental stimuli can be quantified as changes in postural syntax: worms show different preferences for different sequences of postures drawn from the same set of templates. A discrete representation of behaviour will enable the use of methods developed for other kinds of discrete data in bioinformatics and language processing to be harnessed for the study of behaviour.

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Schwarz, R. F., Branicky, R., Grundy, L. J., Schafer, W. R., & Brown, A. E. X. (2015). Changes in Postural Syntax Characterize Sensory Modulation and Natural Variation of C. elegans Locomotion. PLoS Computational Biology, 11(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004322

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