The use of computational modeling to link sensory processing with behavior in Drosophila
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Computational Biology, Neuroscience
- Keywords
- Drosophila, behavior, modeling
- Copyright
- © 2017 Clemens et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. The use of computational modeling to link sensory processing with behavior in Drosophila. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2720v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2720v1
Abstract
A major goal of systems neuroscience is to understand how the brain represents information, and how those representations are used to drive behavior. Even though genetic model organisms like Drosophila grant unprecedented experimental access to the nervous system for manipulating and recording neural activity, the complexity of natural stimuli and natural behaviors still poses a challenge for solving the connections between neural activity and behavior. Here, we advocate for the use of computational modeling to complement (and enhance) the Drosophila toolkit. We first lay out a modelling framework for making sense of the relation between natural sensory stimuli, neuronal responses, and natural behavior. We then highlight how this framework can be used to reveal how neural circuits drive behavior, using selected case studies.
Author Comment
To appear in: Celik, A., Wernet, M. Decoding Neural Circuit Structure and Function: Cellular Dissection Using Genetic Model Organisms. Springer. 2017.