Olfactory Behaviour
olfactory behaviour
Food Mind Control: Regulation of Sensory Behaviors by Gut-Brain Signaling
How does the presence or absence of food shape and prioritize behavioral decisions? When is food more than just food? As in other animals, prolonged food deprivation dramatically alters sensory behaviors in C. elegans. For instance, it has been known since the mid-1970s that hungry worms no longer respond to temperature changes in their environment, but the underlying mechanisms have been unclear. I will describe unpublished work showing that insulin signaling from the gut regulates thermosensory behaviors as a function of feeding state by engaging a modulatory sensorimotor circuit that gates the output of the core thermosensory network. C. elegans is associated with, and consumes, diverse bacteria in the wild. I will also discuss a recent story in which we find that in addition to providing nutrition, a bacterial strain in the worm gut alters the hosts’ olfactory behavior and drives food choice decisions by producing a neurotransmitter that targets the hosts’ sensory neurons. These results add to our growing body of knowledge of how signaling from the gut modulates peripheral and central neuron properties and drives sensory behavioral plasticity.
Functional and structural loci of individuality in the Drosophila olfactory circuit
behaviour varies even among genetically identical animals raised in the same environment. However, little is known about the circuit or anatomical underpinnings of this individuality, though previous work implicates sensory periphery. Drosophila olfaction presents an ideal model to study the biological basis of behavioural individuality, because while the neural circuit underlying olfactory behaviour is well-described and highly stereotyped, persistent idiosyncrasy in behaviour, neural coding, and neural wiring have also been described. Projection neurons (PNs), which relay odor signals sensed by olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) to deeper brain structures, exhibit variable calcium responses to identical odor stimuli across individuals, but how these idiosyncrasies relate to individual behavioural responses remains unknown. Here, using paired behaviour and two-photon imaging measurements, we show that idiosyncratic calcium dynamics in both ORNs and PNs predict individual preferences for an aversive monomolecular odorant versus air, suggesting that variation at the periphery of the olfactory system determines individual preference for an odor’s presence. In contrast, PN, but not ORN, calcium responses predict individual preferences in a two-odor choice assay. Furthermore, paired behaviour and immunohistochemistry measurements reveal that variation in ORN presynaptic density also predicts two-odor preference, suggesting this site is a locus of individuality where microscale circuit variation gives rise to idiosyncrasy in behaviour. Our results demonstrate how a neural circuit may vary functionally and structurally to produce variable behaviour among individuals.
The interaction of learning and evolution in innate olfactory behaviour of Mus musculus and Mus caroli
FENS Forum 2024
Investigating the impact of OPHN1 on olfactory behaviour and neuronal network dynamics
FENS Forum 2024