An animal's nervous system controls its behavior. Complex behavioral sequences are assembled from simpler motor programs. Like nest-building in birds and web-spinning in spiders, grooming in flies represents a flexible, innate, adaptive motor sequence. This project will use the genetic tools available in flies, combined with new machine vision analysis, to identify the neurons that control fly grooming behavior. It will focus on the connections between the brain and the ventral nervous system, since these descending neurons are a natural information bottleneck. Understanding how a limited number of neurons convey commands and coordinate competing reflexes into productive behaviors will advance basic knowledge in neuroscience and provide conceptual insights into how any brain – including human ones – solve similar challenges. One focus of the NSF's mission to promote basic science research is to understand the rules of life, and specifically to predict phenotypes. This research contributes to ongoing efforts to generate maps of all the neurons and their connections in the fly by adding information about their behavioral functions. As part of the educational objectives of this project, the PI will organize a summer course at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics for experimentalists and theorists that will involve both cutting edge topics in modern systems neuroscience and theoretical approaches. Specific efforts will be made to recruit undergraduate students to this quantitative biology summer course.
This research will employ automated behavioral analysis of Drosophila grooming, optogenetic manipulations, and anatomical characterization of neuronal circuits. Screens using new genetic reagents to target specific descending neurons will delineate their behavioral roles. The project will characterize the projections and connections of these neurons to determine how they interface with sensory and motor circuits. Activating combinations of descending neurons that initiate competing behavioral programs will reveal whether decisions are made in the brain or the ventral nerve cord. Neural circuits that can be mapped in the fly represent fundamental motifs that perform computations common to all brains. Understanding their roles in grooming behavior uses the advantages of this model to learn how the brain achieves motor sequences. The broader impact activities include a summer laboratory course in systems neuroscience as part of the ongoing KITP summer program in quantitative biology as well as undergraduate and graduate student training.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
