PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Bokman, Eduard
AU  - Pritz, Christian O.
AU  - Ruach, Rotem
AU  - Itskovits, Eyal
AU  - Sharvit, Hadar
AU  - Zaslaver, Alon
TI  - Intricate response dynamics enhances stimulus discrimination in the resource-limited <em>C. elegans</em> chemosensory system
AID  - 10.1101/2024.01.14.575365
DP  - 2024 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2024.01.14.575365
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/01/15/2024.01.14.575365.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/01/15/2024.01.14.575365.full
AB  - Sensory systems evolved intricate designs to accurately encode perplexing environments. However, this encoding task may become particularly challenging for animals harboring a small number of sensory neurons. Here, we studied how the compact resource-limited chemosensory system of C. elegans uniquely encodes a range of chemical stimuli. We find that each stimulus is encoded using a small and unique subset of neurons, where only a portion of the encoding neurons sense the stimulus directly, and the rest are recruited via inter-neuronal communication. Furthermore, while most neurons show stereotypical response dynamics, some neurons exhibit versatile dynamics that are either stimulus specific or network-activity dependent. Notably, it is the collective dynamics of all responding neurons which provides valuable information that ultimately enhances stimulus identification, particularly when required to discriminate between closely-related stimuli. Together, these findings demonstrate how a compact and resource-limited chemosensory system can efficiently encode and discriminate a diverse range of chemical stimuli.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.All the data and the scripts that analyzed the data to produce the results and the figures herein are available through Github: https://github.com/zaslab/Sensory-encoding