The ability of animals to effectively locate and navigate toward food sources is central for survival. Here, using C. elegans nematodes, we reveal the neural mechanism underlying efficient navigation in chemical gradients. This mechanism relies on the activity of two types of chemosensory neurons: one (AWA) coding gradients via stochastic pulsatile dynamics, and the second (AWCON) coding the gradients deterministically in a graded manner. The pulsatile dynamics of the AWA neuron adapts to the magnitude of the gradient derivative, allowing animals to take trajectories better oriented toward the target. The robust response of AWCON to negative derivatives promotes immediate turns, thus alleviating the costs incurred by erroneous turns dictated by the AWA neuron. This mechanism empowers an efficient navigation strategy that outperforms the classical biased-random walk strategy. This general mechanism thus may be applicable to other sensory modalities for efficient gradient-based navigation.
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机译:动物有效定位食物并向食物源导航的能力对于生存至关重要。在这里,使用线虫线虫,我们揭示了化学梯度中有效导航基础的神经机制。这种机制依赖于两种类型的化学感觉神经元的活性:一种是通过随机脉动动力学编码梯度的AWA,另一种是通过梯度方式确定性地编码梯度的AWC(sup> ON sup>)。 AWA神经元的搏动动力学适应梯度导数的大小,使动物能够沿着更好地朝向目标的方向运动。 AWC ON sup>对负导数的鲁棒响应促进了立即转向,从而减轻了由AWA神经元指示的错误转向所引起的成本。这种机制可提供一种有效的导航策略,其性能优于经典的偏向随机行走策略。因此,该通用机制可以适用于其他感官模式,以进行有效的基于梯度的导航。
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