A neural circuit basis for context-modulation of individual locomotor behavior

Skutt-Kakaria, Kyobi; Reimers, Pablo; Currier, Timothy A.; Werkhoven, Zachary; Bivort, Benjamin L. de

doi:10.1101/797126

Cited by 17 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…To (1) confirm that the Decathlon experiments revealed biologically meaningful couplings between behaviors and (2) probe biological mechanisms potentially giving rise to behavioral correlations, we treated correlations in the Decathlon matrices as hypotheses to test using data from a thermogenetic neural circuit perturbation screen ( Skutt-Kakaria et al, 2019 ). Specifically, we focused on the many correlations between measures of turn timing clumpiness and turn direction switchiness ( Figure 1H and S8).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The structure of behavioral variation within a genotype

Werkhoven¹,

Bravin²,

Skutt-Kakaria

et al. 2021

eLife

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Individual animals vary in their behaviors. This is true even when they share the same genotype and were reared in the same environment. Clusters of covarying behaviors constitute behavioral syndromes, and an individual’s position along such axes of covariation is a representation of their personality. Despite these conceptual frameworks, the structure of behavioral covariation within a genotype is essentially uncharacterized and its mechanistic origins unknown. Passing hundreds of inbred Drosophila individuals through an experimental pipeline that captured hundreds of behavioral measures, we found sparse but significant correlations among small sets of behaviors. Thus, the space of behavioral variation has many independent dimensions. Manipulating the physiology of the brain, and specific neural populations, altered specific correlations. We also observed that variation in gene expression can predict an individual’s position on some behavioral axes. This work represents the first steps in understanding the biological mechanisms determining the structure of behavioral variation within a genotype.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Error bars indicate the 95% confidence interval as determined by bootstrap resampling. Panels ( A ) and ( B ) have been reproduced from Figure 2B and G of Skutt-Kakaria et al, 2019 Bioxiv , published under a CC BY 4.0 license. …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure of behavioral variation within a genotype

Werkhoven¹,

Bravin²,

Skutt-Kakaria

et al. 2021

eLife

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“…Perhaps there are circuit elements encoding valence generally, which are activated by alternative US and can be paired with alternative CS, that vary stochastically across individuals, accounting for their individual performance [1]. Such sites would be “loci of individuality” [24] for learning performance. Mushroom body dopaminergic neurons (DANs) [29,30] and output neurons MBONs [31] are strong candidates, but valence might also be encoded broadly across multiple populations of higher-order learning circuit neurons [30,32].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This suggests that higher-order plasticity circuits within the brain, rather than the sensory periphery, may harbor the sites where molecular- or circuit-level variation imparts individuality to learning responses. Mapping such “loci of individuality” [24] is a compelling direction for future work to characterize the basis of variation in learning ability in this model system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Idiosyncratic learning performance in flies generalizes across modalities

Smith

Turner

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Individuals vary in their innate behaviors, even when they have the same genome and have been reared in the same environment. The extent of individuality in plastic behaviors, like learning, is less well characterized. Also unknown is the extent to which intragenotypic differences in learning generalize: if an individual performs well in one assay, will it perform well in other assays? We investigated this using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an organism long-used to study the mechanistic basis of learning and memory. We found that isogenic flies, reared in identical lab conditions, and subject to classical conditioning that associated odorants with electric shock, exhibit clear individuality in their learning responses. Flies that performed well when an odor was paired with shock tended to perform well when other odors were paired with shock, or when the original odor was paired with bitter taste. Thus, individuality in learning performance appears to be prominent in isogenic animals reared identically, and individual differences in learning performance generalize across stimulus modalities. Establishing these results in flies opens up the possibility of studying the genetic and neural circuit basis of individual differences in learning in a highly suitable model organism.

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“…The population variability in the handedness has been quantified in adult flies (Buchanan et al, 2015a), but to our knowledge not yet at the larval stage. In adult walking flies, individual preferences of turning left or right in maze tests have been shown to persist across days (Buchanan et al, 2015b) and recently have been linked to anatomical differences in the synaptic distribution of bottleneck neurons downstream of the central complex (Skutt-Kakaria et al, 2019). It is interesting that at the larval stage the turning bias is also present, and we speculate that the mechanisms for it could be different.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation of Drosophila larva foraging in response to changes in food distribution

Wosniack

Gjorgjieva

et al. 2021

Preprint

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When foraging, animals combine internal cues and sensory input from their environment to guide sequences of behavioral actions. Drosophila larva executes crawls, turns, and pauses to explore the substrate and find food sources. This exploration has to be flexible in the face of changes in the quality of food so that larvae feed in patches with favorable food and look for another source when the current location does not fulfill their nutritional needs. But which behavioral elements adapt, and what triggers those changes remain elusive. Using experiments and modeling, we investigate the foraging behavior of larvae in homogeneous environments with different food types and in environments where the food sources are patchy. Our work indicates that the speed of larval crawling and frequency of pauses is modulated by the food quality. Interestingly, we found that the genetic dimorphism in the foraging gene influences the exploratory behavior only when larvae crawl on yeast patches. While in a homogeneous substrate larvae maintain a turning bias in a specific orientation, in a patchy substrate larvae orient themselves towards the food when the patch border is reached. Therefore, by adapting different elements in their foraging behavior, larvae either increase the time inside nutritious food patches or continue exploring the substrate in less nutritious environments.

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A neural circuit basis for context-modulation of individual locomotor behavior

Cited by 17 publications

References 70 publications

The structure of behavioral variation within a genotype

The structure of behavioral variation within a genotype

Idiosyncratic learning performance in flies generalizes across modalities

Adaptation of Drosophila larva foraging in response to changes in food distribution

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