Irrational Behavior in C. Elegans Arises from Asymmetric Modulatory Effects Within Single Sensory Neurons

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Jul 21

PMID 31324786

Citations 12

Authors

Shachar Iwanir

Rotem Ruach

Eyal Itskovits

Christian O Pritz

Eduard Bokman

Alon Zaslaver

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

C. elegans worms exhibit a natural chemotaxis towards food cues. This provides a potential platform to study the interactions between stimulus valence and innate behavioral preferences. Here we perform a comprehensive set of choice assays to measure worms' relative preference towards various attractants. Surprisingly, we find that when facing a combination of choices, worms' preferences do not always follow value-based hierarchy. In fact, the innate chemotaxis behavior in worms robustly violates key rationality paradigms of transitivity, independence of irrelevant alternatives and regularity. These violations arise due to asymmetric modulatory effects between the presented options. Functional analysis of the entire chemosensory system at a single-neuron resolution, coupled with analyses of mutants, defective in individual neurons, reveals that these asymmetric effects originate in specific sensory neurons.

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