Related papers: The tardigrade as an emerging model organism for s…
Limbless locomotors, from microscopic worms to macroscopic snakes, traverse complex, heterogeneous natural environments typically using undulatory body wave propagation. Theoretical and robophysical models typically emphasize body…
Head-mounted miniaturized microscopes, commonly known as miniscopes, have undergone rapid development and seen widespread adoption over the past two decades, enabling the imaging of neural activity in freely-behaving animals such as…
Rapid anthropogenic environmental changes, including those due to habitat contamination, degradation, and climate change, have far-reaching effects on biological systems that may outpace animals' adaptive responses (Radchuk et al., 2019).…
Neurobiological theories of spatial cognition developed with respect to recording data from relatively small and/or simplistic environments compared to animals' natural habitats. It has been unclear how to extend theoretical models to large…
The emerging field of optogenetics allows for optical activation or inhibition of neurons and other tissue in the nervous system. In 2005 optogenetic proteins were expressed in the nematode C. elegans for the first time. Since then, C.…
It is still not understood how similar genomic sequences have generated diverse and spectacular forms during evolution. The difficulty to bridge phenotypes and genotypes stems from the complexity of multicellular systems, where thousands of…
{\it Caenorhabditis elegans} nematode worms are the only animals with the known detailed neural connectivity diagram, well characterized genomics, and relatively simple quantifiable behavioral output. With this in mind, many researchers…
Like a rocket being propelled into space, evolution has engineered flies to launch into adulthood via multiple stages. Flies develop and deploy two distinct bodies, linked by the transformative process of metamorphosis. The fly larva is a…
Expansion Microscopy is a super-resolution technique in which physically enlarging samples in an isotropic manner increases inter-molecular distances such that nano-scale structures can be resolved using light microscopy. This is…
Given the inner complexity of the human nervous system, insight into the dynamics of brain activity can be gained from understanding smaller and simpler organisms, such as the nematode C. Elegans. The behavioural and structural biology of…
Walking is a common bipedal and quadrupedal gait and is often associated with terrestrial and aquatic organisms. Inspired by recent evidence of the neural underpinnings of primitive aquatic walking in the little skate Leucoraja erinacea, we…
One of the biggest challenges in biology is to understand how activity at the cellular level of neurons, as a result of their mutual interactions, leads to the observed behavior of an organism responding to a variety of environmental…
Brain-wide recordings of large-scale networks of neurons now provide an unprecedented view into how the brain drives behavior. However, brain activity contains both information directly related to behavior as well as the potential for many…
This research focuses on enabling Northeastern University's Husky, a multi-modal quadrupedal robot, to navigate narrow paths akin to various animals in nature. The Husky is equipped with thrusters to stabilize its body during dynamic…
Modularisation, repetition, and symmetry are structural features shared by almost all biological neural networks. These features are very unlikely to be found by the means of structural evolution of artificial neural networks. This paper…
We develop a biophysical model of neuro-sensory integration in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. Building on recent experimental findings of the neuron conductances and their resolved connectome, we posit the first full dynamic…
Neuromechanics aims to understand the link between an animal's neural activity and its physical behaviors. Recent advances in experimental and machine learning techniques enable simultaneous recordings of neural and locomotion dynamics over…
Sidewinding, a locomotion strategy characterized by the coordination of lateral and vertical body undulations, is frequently observed in rattlesnakes and has been successfully reconstructed by limbless robotic systems for effective movement…
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…
Walking animals, like stick insects, cockroaches or ants, demonstrate a fascinating range of locomotive abilities and complex behaviors. The locomotive behaviors can consist of a variety of walking patterns along with adaptation that allow…