Brain-wide representations of olfactory behavior in C. elegans

Brain-wide neural activity in Caenorhabditis elegans is strongly correlated across olfactory sensory neurons, interneurons, and premotor interneurons during odor-guided navigation and odor-pulse responses.

• Why it matters: Olfactory navigation depends on how sensory input, brain state, and movement interact, but the brain-wide organization linking odor processing to navigational decisions is unclear.
• What they did: Using tracking microscopy, the team recorded brain-wide activity in crawling worms navigating spatial odor gradients or isotropic environments, and in immobilized worms responding to temporal odor pulses.
• The result: Odor gradients versus isotropic exploration revealed a compact functional circuit, different odors separated identity-linked sensory relationships from a shared sensorimotor movement circuit, and crawling versus immobilized states showed profound differences in motor transitions and correlation structure.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.