Neuronal networks – from circuit to behaviour

How does neuronal activity translate into behaviour? We use the spinal locomotor network to study how circuits are coordinated to generate a variable output.

Understanding how different movement patterns are orchestrated will provide insights into the vast complexity of the human brain.Zebrafish allow unique in vivo analyses to reveal the development, circuitry and function of participating neurons.

A pipeline of state-of-the-art techniques will help us to characterize a dozen candidate populations that may be involved in shaping the patterned output at different locomotor speeds.One of the populations is crucial for establishing locomotor patterns, gaits, in horses and mice.

We hypothesize that these interneurons act as a gearbox to facilitate gait transitions by coordinating speed dependent microcircuits in the spinal cord.

Our data show a phenotype related to acceleration defects in zebrafish and in vivo time-lapse imaging and single cell RNA-sequencing reveal subpopulations. We will correlate morphology, firing properties and transcriptome to unravel the subfunctionalization.

By combining optogenetic and calcium imaging techniques with behavioural analyses we will test the gearbox hypothesis and connect neuronal signalling at a cellular level with the locomotor output during speed transitions.By spanning the formation, function and behavioural output of a neuronal network, we will investigate how complex traits are encoded by participating neurons.