Related papers: Dimensionality and dynamics in the behavior of C. …
The vertebrate motor system employs dimensionality-reducing strategies to limit the complexity of movement coordination, for efficient motor control. But when environments are dense with hidden action-outcome contingencies, movement…
C. elegans is the only animal for which a detailed neural connectivity diagram has been constructed. However, synaptic polarities in this diagram, and thus, circuit functions are largely unknown. Here, we deciphered the likely polarities of…
Animals must integrate sensory cues with their current behavioral context to generate a suitable response. How this integration occurs is poorly understood. Previously we developed high throughput methods to probe neural activity in…
Habituation - a phenomenon in which a dynamical system exhibits a diminishing response to repeated stimulations that eventually recovers when the stimulus is withheld - is universally observed in living systems from animals to unicellular…
The nervous system of the nematode soil worm Caenorhabditis elegans exhibits remarkable complexity despite the worm's small size. A general challenge is to better understand the relationship between neural organization and neural activity…
Confinement can be used to systematically tame turbulent dynamics occurring in active fluids. Although periodic channels are the simplest geometries to study confinement numerically, the corresponding experimental realizations require…
We investigate the escape dynamics of oligochaeta {\it Lumbriculus variegatus} by confining them to a quasi-2D circular chamber with a narrow exit passage. The worms move by performing undulatory and peristaltic strokes and use their head…
Robot controllers are often optimised for a single robot in a single environment. This approach proves brittle, as such a controller will often fail to produce sensible behavior for a new morphology or environment. In comparison, animal…
Cell shape has long been used to discern cell phenotypes and states, but the underlying premise has not been quantitatively tested. Here, we show that a single cell image can be used to discriminate its migration behavior by analyzing a…
The physics of behavior seeks simple descriptions of animal behavior. The field has advanced rapidly by using techniques in low dimensional dynamics distilled from computer vision. Yet, we still do not generally understand the rules which…
Many dynamical systems found in biology, ranging from genetic circuits to the human brain to human social systems, are inherently computational. Although extensive research has explored their resulting functions and behaviors, the…
We apply topological data analysis to the behavior of C. elegans, a widely-studied model organism in biology. In particular, we use topology to produce a quantitative summary of complex behavior which may be applied to high-throughput data.…
Collective behavior is all around us, from flocks of birds to schools of fish. These systems are immensely complex, which makes it pertinent to study their behavior through minimal models. We introduce such a minimal model for cohesive and…
We study external, electrical perturbations and their responses in the brain dynamic network of the \textit{Caenorhabditis elegans} soil worm, given by the connectome of its large somatic nervous system. Our analysis is inspired by a…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
We propose a simple adaptive-network model describing recent swarming experiments. Exploiting an analogy with human decision making, we capture the dynamics of the model by a low-dimensional system of equations permitting analytical…
We report on the effects of temporal modulation of the driving force on a particular class of localized states, known as worms, that have been observed in electroconvection in nematic liquid crystals. The worms consist of the superposition…
A central problem of neuroscience involves uncovering the principles governing the organization of nervous systems which ensure robustness in brain development. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans provides us with a model organism for…
Recent progress in diverse intelligence has shown simple learning capacities below the organism level - single cells and even molecular networks. However, there are still many knowledge gaps around learning capacity above the organism…
We investigate the behavior of {\it Lumbriculus variegatus} in circular and polygonal chambers and show that the worms align with the boundaries as they move forward and then become dynamically trapped at the concave corners over prolonged…