Summary: A new investigation reveals how electric connections help animals, including insects, filter sensory input and make context-appropriate choices. These synapses, which are mediated by the protein INX-1, connect certain worm neurons, dampening useless signals and putting prioritizing crucial ones, according to researchers ‘ findings.
This system enables worms to understand temperature gradients properly, avoiding distractions. Hypersensitivity to small temperature changes in worms without an INX-1 function interferes with their ability to select appropriate behaviors.
Since electric synapses exist in several animals, including humans, the findings perhaps provide insights into how brains procedure visual information for decision-making. The study demonstrates a common tenet: the ability to filter out sensory inputs and guide behavior requires specific neural connections.
Major Information
- Neurological Filtering: Electrical synapses dampen poor signals, allowing worms to prioritize important visual inputs for effective navigation.
- Protein INX-1 Role: INX-1-mediated electric connections in AIY cells enable context-specific behaviour in insects.
- Broader Implications: Related systems may manage sensory running in other creatures, including humans, influencing decision-making and understanding.
Origin: Yale
Researchers at Yale and the University of Connecticut have made a significant step forward in studying how canine neurons make decisions, revealing a vital role for electric neurons in “filtering” visual information.
The new study,  , published in the journal , Cell, demonstrates how a specific design of electric connections enables animals to make context-appropriate decisions, also when faced with similar visual input.
Pet brains are continually bombarded with sensory data — sights, noises, smells, and more. According to experts, making sense of this information requires a complex filtering system that concentrates on important details and enables an animal to behave appropriately.
For a filtering program doesn’t just stop out “noise” — it constantly prioritizes information depending on the situation. Action selection refers to the use of a context-specific behavior by stopping on particular sensory information.
The Yale-led study focused on a worm,  , C. elegans, which, surprisingly, provides a powerful model for understanding the neural mechanisms of action selection.  , C. elegans , can learn to prefer specific temperatures, when in a temperature gradient, it uses a simple, yet effective strategy to navigate towards its preferred temperature.
Worms first cross the gradient to reach their preferred temperature ( a process known as “gradient migration” ), then follow the desired temperature to stay within its desired range ( a process known as “isothermal tracking” ).
Worms can also engage in context-specific behaviors, such as isothermal tracking and gradient migration when they are far away from their preferred temperature.
But how do they actually behave in the right way in the right circumstances?
The researchers ‘ research included a particular type of neuronal cell connection, called electrical synapses, in contrast to the more extensively studied chemical synapses.
They discovered that these electrical synapses, which are mediated by an INX-1 protein, connect a particular pair of AIY neurons, which are in charge of the worm’s locomotion decisions.
Daniel Colón-Ramos, the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine and corresponding author of the study, said,” Altering this electrical conduit in a single pair of cells can change what the animal chooses to do.”
The team found that these electrical synapses don’t simply transmit signals, they also act as a “filter”. The electrical connection effectively dampens signals from the thermosensory neurons in worms with normal INX-1 function, allowing the worm to ignore weak temperature variations and concentrate on the larger changes that the temperature gradient causes.
This makes sure that the worms move smoothly across the gradient and toward the temperature they want without being distracted by context-irrelevant signals, like those found in isothermal tracks, which are present throughout the gradient but are not at the desired temperatures.
However, in worms lacking INX-1, the AIY neurons become hypersensitive, responding much more strongly to minor temperature fluctuations. The animals are confined in isotherms that are not their preferred temperature because of this hypersensitivity because of the worms ‘ reaction to these tiny signals.  ,
The ability of the worms to move across the temperature gradient to reach their desired temperature is affected by such abnormal tracking of isotherms in incorrect settings.  ,
” It would be like watching a confused bird flying with its legs extended”, Colón-Ramos said. When a bird extends its legs in the wrong context, it would be against its customary behavior and objectives.
The findings have significant implications beyond worm behavior because electrical synapses are present in many different animal nervous systems, from worms to humans.
Colón-Ramos said,” Scientists will be able to use this information to examine how relationships between single neurons can alter an animal’s perception of and response to its surroundings.”
The underlying principle of the role of electrical synapses in coupling neurons to alter responses to sensory information may be widely accepted, though the specific details of action selection will likely vary.
For instance, a group of neurons known as “amacrine cells” in our retina uses a similar set of electrical synapses to control visual sensitivity when our eyes adapt to changes in light.
The way that animals process and then react sensory information is largely dictated by synaptic configurations, and the research found in a new study suggests that synaptic configurations play a significant role in controlling how nervous systems process context-specific sensory information to influence animal perception and behavior.
Colón-Ramos is also associate director of Yale’s Wu Tsai Institute, which is devoted to the study of cognition.
The study’s co-lead authors are Agustin Almoril-Porras and Ana Calvo from Yale. Co-authors are Jonathan Beagan, Malcom Díaz Garcia, Josh Hawk, Ahmad Aljobeh, Elias Wisdom, and Ivy Ren, all of Yale, and Longgang Niu and Zhao-Wen Wang of the University of Connecticut.
Funding: The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholar Award.
About this news about neuroscience research
Author: Bess Connolly
Source: Yale
Contact: Bess Connolly – Yale
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
By Daniel Colón-Ramos and others,” Sensory information is filtered by electrical synapses ‘ configuration to influence behavior..” Cell
Abstract
Sensory information is filtered by electrical synapses ‘ configuration to influence behavior.
How the nervous system processes sensory information to create a behavioral response is underpinned by synaptic configurations.
We are less aware of how electrical synaptic configurations affect sensory processing and context-specific behaviors, and this is best understood for chemical synapses.
We discovered that innexin 1 ( INX-1 ), a gap junction protein that forms electrical synapses, is required to deploy context-specific behavioral strategies underlying thermotaxis behavior in , C.  , elegans.
In order to integrate sensory information during migratory behavior across temperature gradients, INX-1 couples two bilaterally symmetric interneurons within this well-defined circuit.
In , inx-1 , uncoupled interneurons exhibit increased excitability and responses to subthreshold sensory stimuli as a result of longer run-durations and trap the animals in context-irrelevant tracking of isotherms.
Thus, a conserved set of electrical synapses makes it possible to use context-specific behavioral strategies for differential processing of sensory information.
