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| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Changes in postural syntax characterize sensory modulation and natural variation of C. elegans locomotion |
| Creators Name: | Schwarz, R.F., Branicky, R., Grundy, L.J., Schafer, W.R. and Brown, A.E.X. |
| 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. |
| Keywords: | Animal Behavior, Cluster Analysis, Computational Biology, Locomotion, Optogenetics, Animals, Caenorhabditis elegans |
| Source: | PLoS Computational Biology |
| ISSN: | 1553-734X |
| Publisher: | Public Library of Science |
| Volume: | 11 |
| Number: | 8 |
| Page Range: | e1004322 |
| Date: | 21 August 2015 |
| Official Publication: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004322 |
| PubMed: | View item in PubMed |
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