? ? The ultimate goal of neural science is to understand how interaction between the peripheral and ? central nervous systems gives rise to human behavior, how sensory information is processed in ? our brain and memory to stimulate action. But, as human behavior is mediated by a brain with ? over 100 billion neurons, a comprehensive and integrative approach all the way from sensory ? input to motor output is currently unimaginable. The fruit fly Drosophila, with sensory ? modalities, neural circuits, and complex behaviors that are strongly evolutionarily conserved, ? has emerged as a model system for neural research. Drosophila is simple enough to be tractable, ? yet complex enough to be scientifically interesting as well as biomedically relevant. This ? research program will create new paradigms for understanding perception and voluntary ? action using larval Drosophila, which has unique advantages for this study. In preliminary work, ? we have used a novel tracking system to quantify the algorithms that underlie larval ? chemotactic, phototactic, and thermotactic behavior. Using genetic tools provided by our ? collaborators and new tools that we are developing for optical physiology and behavior ? quantification in freely moving animals, we will investigate how pathways within the larval ? brain use information gathered across the larvum?s sensory periphery to make decisions and ? result in physical behavior. These individual sensory modality studies are the first steps to ? understanding this model system?s deeper complexities, the behavioral principles and neural ? encoding behind the brain?s synthesis of the separate environmental representations provided ? by multiple senses to result in purposeful and coherent behavior.
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