What are the rules that govern connectivity, activity and robustness of neuronal networks that underlie fundamental behaviors?
Locomotion is a fundamental behavior shared by all animals and understanding its neuronal basis has been a major goal in neuroscience for many years. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a particularly attractive model to study locomotion. It is the first multi-cellular organism to have its genome sequenced and the only animal that has a complete map of its cell lineage and nervous system. Recent technological breakthroughs, mainly in the fields of opto-genetics and opto-physiology respectively allow non-intrusively stimulating and recording from single cells as well as networks in vivo. I use these technologies to investigate the activity of all the elements of C. elegans locomotion network, composed of 75 neurons and 75 muscle cells, during locomotion.