Deciphering neural codes underlying behavioral regulation

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project Area: Neural Diversity and Neocortical Organization
• Project/Area Number: 22123010
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Research in a proposed research area)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Review Section: Biological Sciences
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: MORI Ikue 名古屋大学, 理学(系)研究科(研究院), 教授 (90219999)
• Project Period (FY): 2010-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 感覚神経細胞 / 記憶・学習 / 温度走性 / Cエレガンス / 神経回路

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We aimed to decipher neural codes that regulate memory-based behavior, using the neural circuit underlying thermotaxis in C. elegans, as an ideal circuit system. We revealed that the major thermosensory neuron AFD can remember cultivation temperatures and that the temperature memory is modulated by CaMKI and raf kinase pathways in AFD neurons. Calcium imaging of AIY and RIA interneurons, which receive synaptic outputs from AFD and AIY, respectively, showed that AIY neurons convey the information of temperature memory in AFD to the downstream interneuron RIA, in which the magnitude and frequency of stochastic calcium response appeared to be shut down at the temperature that corresponds to the memorized temperature in AFD. Our results and previous studies altogether proposed the neural circuit model, in which the circuits for the head swing and dorso-ventral sinus curve body movement are coordinated through many interneurons with different functions.

Free Research Field

神経科学一般