An intrinsic neuronal manifold underlies brain-wide hierarchical organization of behavior in C. elegans

Fieseler, C.; Lev, I.; Rey, U.; Hille, L.; Brenner, H.; Zimmer, M.

doi:10.1101/2025.03.09.642241

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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2025.03.09.642241

An intrinsic neuronal manifold underlies brain-wide hierarchical organization of behavior in C. elegans

Fieseler, C.·Lev, I.·Rey, U.·Hille, L.·Brenner, H.·Zimmer, M.

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Abstract

Large-scale neuronal recordings in various species have revealed behavior-related activity patterns. Surprisingly, these activities are distributed across brain regions, including sensory areas. However, their origins and functions are incompletely understood. Using whole-brain imaging in freely behaving C. elegans, we discover that such distributed brain activity is dominated by a low dimensional manifold, corresponding to the major action sequence of C. elegans. The manifold originates largely from intrinsic dynamics, with minor contributions from movement-induced sensations. We discover a new function of the manifold: to gate the activity of a large number of neuron classes. This gating constrains them to selectively encode faster time-scale motor patterns during specific brain states. We therefore propose that one principle function of brain-wide dynamics is to enable hierarchical organization of behavior: information about major actions is broadcast via a distributed manifold, to enable nesting of granular motor patterns within those major actions.

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Fieseler, C., Lev, I., Rey, U., Hille, L., Brenner, H., Zimmer, M.. 2025-03-11. An intrinsic neuronal manifold underlies brain-wide hierarchical organization of behavior in C. elegans. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.09.642241

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