The small (1 mm) nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (Corsi [1], wormbook.org) has become widely used as a model organism; in particular, the C. elegans connectome has been completely mapped, and C. elegans locomotion has been widely studied. We describe a minimal reaction-diffusion model for the locomotion of C. elegans, using as a framework a simplified, stylized "descending pathway" of neurons as central pattern generator (CPG) (Xu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, 2018). Finally, we realize a model of the required oscillations and coupling with a network of coupled Keener (IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics SMC-13, 1983 [3]) analog neurons. Note that Olivares et al. (BioRxiv 710566, 2020 [4]) present a likely more realistic model more distributed CPG. We use the simpler simulation to show that a small network of FitzHugh-Nagumo neurons (one of the simplest neuronal models) can generate key features of C. elegans undulation, and thus locomotion, yielding a minimal, biomimetic model as a building block for further exploring C. elegans locomotion.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2103.03430,
title = {A minimal reaction-diffusion neural model generates $\textit{C. elegans}$ undulation},
author = {Anshul Singhvi and Harold M. Hastings and Jenny Magnes and Susannah G. Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.03430},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
10 pages, 5 figures. Research presented as poster at NYSSAPS 2019, IPoLS 2020, and APS March 2020 meetings