Context-dependent Encoding of Descending Neurons in Drosophila Open Access
Qiu, Jirui (2017)
Abstract
Animals exhibit a wide variety of behaviors. How these behaviors
are initiated, sustained, and modulated, though, remains largely
unknown. For a substantial number of animals, including Drosophila,
descending neurons communicate signals from the brain to local
circuits to generate motor outputs. However, little is known about
the associations between descending neurons and behavior outputs.
Now the combination of optogenetic techniques and an unsupervised
measurement of animal behaviors permits us to study the behavioral
effects of stimulating individual descending neurons in freely
moving Drosophilae. Our study finds evidence supporting the theory
that these induced behavioral effects are context-dependency.
Previous behavioral statuses can affect the behavioral effects
induced by activating individual descending neurons.
Our study applies mutual information as a main approach to
measuring the correlations between behavioral probability
distributions, and to characterizing context-dependency. To further
explore the properties of context-dependency, we then apply
multiple statistical methods to analyze the experimental results.
Based on information theory, we study the general principles of the
signal transmission within the neural network and possible
theoretical hypotheses for the context-dependency. This thesis aims
to provide insights into how the brain modulates animal behaviors,
and pave the way toward a deeper understanding toward the
functioning of the neural network.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Background
1.2.1 Drosophila
1.2.2 Descending neurons
1.2.3 Optogenetic Techniques
1.2.4 GAL4-UAS system
1.2.5 Behavioral analysis
1.3 Methods
1.3.1 Unsupervised Behavioral Analysis
1.3.2 Data Set
1.3.3 Mutual Information
1.3.4 Estimation of Mutual information
Chapter 2 Results
2.1 Context-dependent Behavioral Transitions
2.2 Shuffling
2.3 Estimating Mutual Information
2.4 Comparison of Behavioral Effects
Chapter 3 Discussion
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Theoretical Basis from Information Theory
3.2.1 Information Transmission within Neural Networks
3.2.2 Comparisons of Neural Networks with Varied Number of
Layers
3.2.3 Trade-off between Sensitivity and Complexity
3.2.4 Context-dependency - An Approach to Integrating and
Compensating the Loss of Information
3.3 Biological Basis of Context-Dependency
Chapter 4 Prediction and Experimental Design
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Inhibiting Neighboring Descending Neurons
4.3 Isolating Segments in Ventral Nerve Cord
4.4 Descending Neurons at Multiple Firing Rates
Chapter 5 Further Studies
5.1 Alternative quantifications of context-dependency
5.2 Context-dependency in Multiple Scales
5.3 Properties of the Communication Channels
5.4 Conclusion
Chapter 6 Summary
6.1 Results
6.2 Discussion
6.3 Conclusion
About this Master's Thesis
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