Multistable coordination of feeding motor rhythms in semi-intact preparation ofLymnaea stagnalis

Abstract

It is well known that most rhythm-generating neuronal ensembles are multifunctional and can generate different motor rhythms in different contexts. This implies that coordination of multifunctional networks must also be flexible or multistable. Coordination of radula movements and gut contractions was studied in semi-intact preparations of L. stagnalis using video registration and an event recorder. Several context-dependent stable variants of radula-gut coordination were detected. Our data suggest that this preparation is a promising model for studying mechanisms of multistable motor rhythm coordination.

Previous motor activity affects transition from uncertainty to decision-making in snails

“…Lymnaea stagnalis snails have been used extensively for the analysis of cellular and molecular mechanisms of locomotion (Syed and Winlow, 1991b;Pavlova, 2010;Longley and Peterman, 2013), feeding (Benjamin and Rose, 1979;Elliott and Benjamin, 1989;Kemenes and Elliott, 1994;Staras et al, 1998Staras et al, , 2003Alania et al, 2004;Vehovszky et al, 2005;Vavoulis et al, 2007;Chistopolsky and Dyakonova, 2012), respiration (Syed and Winlow, 1991a,b;Tsyganov et al, 2004;Bell et al, 2007), learning and memory (Kemenes et al, 1997(Kemenes et al, , 2002Kojima et al, 1997;Spencer et al, 1999;Staras et al, 1998;Jones et al, 2003;Sangha et al, 2003;Kemenes et al, 2006;Nikitin et al, 2008;Marra et al, 2013;Mita et al, 2014;Naskar et al, 2014), and decision making (Pirger et al, 2014;Crossley et al, 2016). There are also approaches that have been developed only in this organism, particularly the studies at the single-cell level of freshly isolated, not cultured, neurons (Dyakonova et al, 2009(Dyakonova et al, , 2015Dyakonova and Dyakonova, 2010), and experimental tests of an extracellular chemical microenvironment that has been demonstrated to play a prominent 'socializing' role in adjusting single-cell physiology to the network state (Dyakonova et al, 2015).…”