Neuronal circuits underlying sensorimotor transformations

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France

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Working place: Jovanic team at the Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience (NeuroPSI)

The team uses Drosophila larva as a model system to map neural circuits using a multidisciplinary approach that combines neural manipulation during behavior, electron microscopy (EM) reconstruction of neuronal connectivity at a synaptic level and recording of neuronal activity using Calcium imaging with the goal of understanding computational principles underlying complex behaviors and their modulation by the context and internal state. More details about the team can be found here.

Missions:

In order to survive animal’s constantly need to adjust their behavioral output to the dynamic changes in the environment and their internal needs. The brain performs computations such multisensory integration, learning, decision-making etc that then need to be transmitted to the motor circuits that control the behavior output and that are located close to the muscles that they control, which is in spinal cord in the vertebrate and ventral nerve cord (VNC) in invertebrates. In addition, the higher order brain regions also need to receive information about animal’s behavioral and locomotor state to efficiently process relevant information. The communication between higher order regions and sensorimotor circuits is mediated via ascending and descending pathways across species, however the exact mechanism by which the information from higher order regions conveyed to sensorimotor circuits and vice versa and how is this information integrated to produce appropriate behavioral output and adjust locomotion to the changes in the environment at different scales is not well understood. We propose to fill this gap in a powerful model organism for neural circuit analysis: the Drosophila larva. Drosophila larvae are ideally suited for combining comprehensive, synapticresolution circuit mapping across the nervous system with targeted manipulation of uniquely identified circuit motifs at the individual neuron level, which makes it possible to establish a causal relationship between circuit structure and function brain-wide.

Using functional imaging, connectiommics, optogenetics and quantitative behavior analysis the candidate will take part in mapping sensorimotor circuits underlying mechanosensory responses and characterize neuromuscular mechanisms underlying avoidance behavior at single cell resolution. Furthermore, they will characterize the ascending and descending pathways that connect the sensorimotor networks in the ventral nerve cord (VNC) and the central brain and determine which information from the environment has an influence on the central brain through ascending pathways and how the decisions and information about motivation/ internal state are conveyed to the sensorimotor system to control locomotion and other behave. The project will be conducted in collaboration with the Decision and Bayesian Computation team at the Pasteur Institute on the physical model of the larva.

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