Irrational behavior in C. elegans arises from asymmetric modulatory effects within single sensory neurons

Shachar Iwanir, Rotem Ruach, Eyal Itskovits, Christian O. Pritz, Eduard Bokman and Alon Zaslaver ()
Additional contact information
Shachar Iwanir: Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Rotem Ruach: Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Eyal Itskovits: Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Christian O. Pritz: Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Eduard Bokman: Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Alon Zaslaver: Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11163-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-11163-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11163-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().