Advanced Methods for Behavior Expriments
3D Worm Tracker
[1] 3-D Worm Tracker for Freely Moving C. elegans
- Namseop Kwon, Jaeyeon Pyo, Seung-Jae Lee, Jung Ho Je
- PLoS ONE 8(2): e57484 (2013)
- They developed a 3-D worm tracker (3DWT) for freely moving C. elegans in 3-D environments, based on a stereoscopic configuration.
- The 3DWT provides us with a quantitative trajectory, including the position and movement direction of the worm in 3-D. The 3DWT is also capable of recording and visualizing postures of the moving worm in 3-D, which are more complex than those in 2-D.
- This 3DWT affords new opportunities for understanding the nervous system function that regulates animal behaviors in natural 3-D environments.
High-Content Analysis of Behavior
[1] High-content behavioral analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans in precise spatiotemporal chemical environments
- Dirk R Albrecht and Cornelia I Bargmann
- Nature Methods 8, 599–605 (2011)
- They describe a microfluidic system to analyze C. elegans behavior in defined temporal and spatial stimulus patterns.
- A 2 cm × 2 cm structured arena allowed C. elegans to perform crawling locomotion in a controlled liquid environment. We characterized behavioral responses to attractive odors with three stimulus patterns: temporal pulses, spatial stripes and a linear concentration gradient, all delivered in the fluid phase to eliminate variability associated with air-fluid transitions.
- Different stimulus configurations preferentially revealed turning dynamics in a biased random walk, directed orientation into an odor stripe and speed regulation by odor.
