Flexible modulation of neuronal population dynamics drives variable decision-making in C. elegans
- 1The University of Vienna
Abstract
Behavior arises from the interplay between spontaneous brain dynamics and sensory-driven responses, yet how spontaneous neural activity shapes variability in decision-making remains unclear. We leverage the tractable C. elegans nervous system to address this question. During oxygen avoidance, we observe binary trial-to-trial variability in behavioral responses. Whole-brain calcium imaging reveals a brain-wide sensory-to-motor transformation in which sensory neurons faithfully encode the stimulus but do not predict choice. Instead, decision-related information is distributed across interneurons and motor neurons, encoded through a neuronal subspace. This decision-biasing state evolves slowly during the pre-stimulus period, resembling preparatory dynamics for spontaneous behavioral transitions but receives neuromodulatory contributions. Optogenetic manipulations reveal that only a subset of neurons within this distributed representation are causally connected to choice. This reveals a dissociation between broad information sharing and control via dedicated localized nodes. Thus, response variability arises from slowly evolving modulation of brain states rather than stochastic circuit noise.
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BibTeX
@misc{madhusudhanan2026flexible,
title = {{Flexible modulation of neuronal population dynamics drives variable decision-making in C. elegans}},
author = {J. Madhusudhanan and A. Parinov and C. Fieseler and M. Zimmer},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.03.749061},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.03.749061v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Flexible modulation of neuronal population dynamics drives variable decision-making in C. elegans
AU - J. Madhusudhanan
AU - A. Parinov
AU - C. Fieseler
AU - M. Zimmer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/03
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.03.749061
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.03.749061v1
AB - Behavior arises from the interplay between spontaneous brain dynamics and sensory-driven responses, yet how spontaneous neural activity shapes variability in decision-making remains unclear. We leverage the tractable C. elegans nervous system to address this question. During oxygen avoidance, we observe binary trial-to-trial variability in behavioral responses. Whole-brain calcium imaging reveals a brain-wide sensory-to-motor transformation in which sensory neurons faithfully encode the stimulus but do not predict choice. Instead, decision-related information is distributed across interneurons and motor neurons, encoded through a neuronal subspace. This decision-biasing state evolves slowly during the pre-stimulus period, resembling preparatory dynamics for spontaneous behavioral transitions but receives neuromodulatory contributions. Optogenetic manipulations reveal that only a subset of neurons within this distributed representation are causally connected to choice. This reveals a dissociation between broad information sharing and control via dedicated localized nodes. Thus, response variability arises from slowly evolving modulation of brain states rather than stochastic circuit noise.
ER -