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Undulatory locomotion is common to nematodes as well as to limbless vertebrates, but its control is not understood in spite of the identification of hundred of genes involved in Caenorhabditis elegans locomotion. To reveal the mechanisms of…
Control is essential to the functioning of any neural system. Indeed, under healthy conditions the brain must be able to continuously maintain a tight functional control between the system's inputs and outputs. One may therefore hypothesise…
A major challenge in analyzing animal behavior is to discover some underlying simplicity in complex motor actions. Here we show that the space of shapes adopted by the nematode C. elegans is surprisingly low dimensional, with just four…
Quadruped animal locomotion emerges from the interactions between the spinal central pattern generator (CPG), sensory feedback, and supraspinal drive signals from the brain. Computational models of CPGs have been widely used for…
Caenorhabditis elegans, a free-living soil nematode, propels itself by producing undulatory body motion and displays a rich variety of body shapes and trajectories during its locomotion in complex environments. Here we show that the complex…
In the study of biological networks, one of the major challenges is to understand the relationships between network structure and dynamics. In this paper, we model in vitro cortical neuronal cultures as stochastic dynamical systems and…
Recent whole brain imaging experiments on $\textit{C. elegans}$ has revealed that the neural population dynamics encode motor commands and stereotyped transitions between behaviors on low dimensional manifolds. Efforts to characterize the…
The physical and bio-mechanical principles that govern undulatory movement on wet surfaces have important applications in physiology, physics, and engineering. The nematode {\it C. elegans}, with its highly stereotypical and functionally…
In large neuronal networks, it is believed that functions emerge through the collective behavior of many interconnected neurons. Recently, the development of experimental techniques that allow simultaneous recording of calcium concentration…
Transport of dense core vesicles (DCVs) in neurons is crucial for distributing molecules like neuropeptides and growth factors. We studied the experimental trajectories of dynein-driven directed movement of DCVs in the ALA neuron C. elegans…
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.…
Animals possess a remarkable ability to navigate challenging terrains, achieved through the interplay of various pathways between the brain, central pattern generators (CPGs) in the spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system. Traditional…
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…
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…
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…
The connectome describes the complete set of synaptic contacts through which neurons communicate. While the architecture of the $\textit{C. elegans}$ connectome has been extensively characterized, much less is known about the organization…
Our understanding of the neural basis of locomotor behavior can be informed by careful quantification of animal movement. Classical descriptions of legged locomotion have defined discrete locomotor gaits, characterized by distinct patterns…
Stick insect stepping patterns have been studied for insights about locomotor rhythm generation and control, because the underlying neural system is relatively accessible experimentally and produces a variety of rhythmic outputs. Harnessing…
We study the dynamics of the structure of a formal neural network wherein the strengths of the synapses are governed by spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). For properly chosen input signals, there exists a steady state with a residual…
Synchronization plays a key role in information processing in neuronal networks. Response of specific groups of neurons are triggered by external stimuli, such as visual, tactile or olfactory inputs. Neurons, however, can be divided into…