Related papers: The head leads the body: a curvature-based kinemat…

How do the same mechanisms that faithfully regenerate complex developmental programs in spite of environmental and genetic perturbations also permit responsiveness to environmental signals, adaptation, and genetic evolution? Using the…

The dynamics of complex systems generally include high-dimensional, non-stationary and non-linear behavior, all of which pose fundamental challenges to quantitative understanding. To address these difficulties we detail a new approach based…

Rapid advances in genetics, genomics, and imaging have given insight into the molecular and cellular basis of behaviour in a variety of model organisms with unprecedented detail and scope. It is increasingly routine to isolate behavioural…

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…

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.…

Abrupt changes in behavior can often be associated with changes in underlying behavioral states. When placed off food, the foraging behavior of C. elegans can be described as a change between an initial local-search behavior characterized…

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…

Understanding how information about external stimuli is transformed into behavior is one of the central goals of neuroscience. Here we characterize the information flow through a complete sensorimotor circuit: from stimulus, to sensory…

Curvature plays a central role in the proper function of many biological processes. With active matter being a standard framework for understanding many aspects of the physics of life, it is natural to ask what effect curvature has on the…

Spatially-embedded complex networks, such as nervous systems, the Internet and transportation networks, generally have non-trivial topological patterns of connections combined with nearly minimal wiring costs. However the growth rules…

Here we show that coupling to curvature has profound effects on collective motion in active systems, leading to patterns not observed in flat space. Biological examples of such active motion in curved environments are numerous: curvature…

Microorganisms, such as bacteria and microalgae, often live in habitats consisting of a liquid phase and a plethora of interfaces. The precise ways in which these motile microbes behave in their confined environment remain unclear. Using…

A fundamental problem in neuroscience is understanding how a network's properties dictate its function. Connectomics provides one avenue to predict nervous system function. To test this explicitly, we systematically measure signal…

Complex networks can often be decomposed into less complex sub-networks whose structures can give hints about the functional organization of the network as a whole. However, these structural motifs can only tell one part of the functional…

Background Despite its status as a model organism, the development of Caenorhabditis elegans is not necessarily archetypical for nematodes. The phylum Nematoda is divided into the Chromadorea (indcludes C. elegans) and the Enoplea. Compared…

Molecular networks act as the backbone of cellular activities, providing an {excellent} opportunity to understand the developmental changes in an organism. While network data usually constitute only stationary network graphs, constructing…

Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…

Although typically possessing four limbs and short bodies, lizards have evolved a diversity of body plans, from short-bodied and fully-limbed to elongate and nearly limbless. Such diversity in body morphology is hypothesized as adaptations…

Undulatory locomotion is a means of self-propulsion that relies on the generation and propagation of waves along a body. As a mode of locomotion it is primitive and relatively simple, yet can be remarkably robust. No wonder then, that it is…

The roundworm C. elegans exhibits robust escape behavior in response to rapidly rising temperature. The behavior lasts for a few seconds, shows history dependence, involves both sensory and motor systems, and is too complicated to model…