HEИндивидуална стипендия2023–2025

DeCoDr · Descending Control of Motor Circuits in Drosophila

„Хоризонт Европа“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2023-05-01 → 2025-04-30
Финансиране от ЕС: 189 687 €
Участници: 1
Схема: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Невронните вериги при плодовата муха се изследват, за да се разбере как мозъкът подава команди за движение на краката. Тези знания помагат при разработването на роботизирани протези и лечението на двигателни разстройства.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Descending Control of Motor Circuits in Drosophila

Understanding how neural circuits control arm and leg movements is a major challenge in neuroscience with implications for treating movement disorders, designing neural prostheses, and robotics. Even seemingly simple, everyday movements such as walking rely on the integrated activity of complex circuits that span multiple levels of the nervous system. High-level circuits in the brain generate movement instructions, such as when to start moving and how fast to move. Low-level circuits in the spinal cord (in vertebrates) or ventral nerve cord (in invertebrates) integrate these instructions to generate appropriate activation patterns for muscles. The instructions are encoded by a small number of descending neurons, which form a critical link between the brain and the body. In this project, we addressed two major open questions related to descending neurons: how brain circuits are organized to recruit descending neurons for a specific motor task in a context-appropriate manner, and how low-level circuits translate descending neuron instructions into coordinated limb movement. To tackle these questions, we took advantage of the powerful experimental tools available for the compact nervous system of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, including connectomics, optogenetics, and neural recordings in behaving animals. The fly’s neural circuits controlling the limbs are more tractable and experimentally accessible than those of vertebrates, but still similar in their basic organization and function. This suggests that the motor control principles discovered in the fly will be highly relevant to motor control in other animals, including mammals.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Understanding how neural circuits control arm and leg movements is a major challenge in neuroscience with implications for treating movement disorders, designing neural prostheses, and robotics. Limb movements are coordinated by low-level motor circuits in the spinal cord (in vertebrates) or ventral nerve cord (in invertebrates), which receive movement instructions from the brain via a small number of descending neurons (DNs). DNs constitute the critical link between the brain and the body. However, despite their importance, little is known about how specific DNs are recruited depending on the behavioral context, and how low-level motor circuits in the spinal cord or ventral nerve cord translate DN activity into limb movement. I propose leveraging cutting-edge tools to tackle these fundamental questions in the compact nervous system of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. The fly’s neural circuits for controlling limbs are more tractable and experimentally accessible than those of vertebrates, but still similar in their organization and function. Focussing on DNs that have been implicated in the control of walking speed, I will characterize the activity of DNs during behavior, identify the target neurons of DNs in motor circuits in the ventral nerve cord, and quantify the influence of DNs on these target neurons. By combining intracellular patch-clamp recordings, calcium imaging, and movement tracking in behaving animals with computational modeling and connectomics, the proposed research project will provide unique mechanistic insight into the interactions between the brain and low-level motor circuits that have remained elusive in other animals.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

JULIUS-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAT WURZBURG · WuerzburgКоординаторГермания