Project Details
Projekt
NeuroNex: Communication, Coordination, and Control in Neuromechanical Systems (C3NS)
Applicants
Dr. Jan M. Ache; Professor Dr. Alexander Blanke; Professor Dr. Ansgar Büschges; Professor Dr. Martin S. Fischer; Professor Dr. Kei Ito
Subject Area
Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 436258345
Animals move to seek food, mates, and shelter. In the phyla Arthropoda, Mollusca, and Chordata, the nervous system cephalized towards a higher-level brain and lower-level sensorimotor network. The brain would not exist without a body, and yet little is understood about how the nervous system controls and coordinates distributed body parts. Many fundamental questions remain unanswered: How is neural information encoded and communicated? How does the system correct for environmental perturbations? How do passive biomechanics affect the neuronal control of behavior? This leads to the foundational question: How do nervous systems control and execute interactions with the environment? We are an international Network of interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs) consisting of modelers, engineers, and experimentalists to explore the Communication, Coordination, and Control of Neuromechanical Systems (C3NS) joining a programme of collaborative research for five years in the NSF coordinated NeuroNex programme. We investigate our foundational question in model genera from three phyla: Adult Drosophila from Arthropoda, Aplysia from Mollusca, and small mammals from Chordata. Each IRG studies the control of a behavior in which the body interacts with the environment. Investigators explore how higher-level command centers (HLCCs) generate descending commands to lower-level motor centers (LLMCs), how LLMCs control the body to produce desired behavior, and how LLMCs generate ascending signals back to HLCCs. The animal models of C3NS allow the investigation of these questions across degrees of nervous system complexity and ranges of dynamic scale (i.e. size and speed) using the same conceptual modeling framework, creating a bottom-up understanding of how nervous systems control movement during environmental interactions. This is the application for further DFG support of the five perticipting German scientists for year 4 and 5 in the C3NS research consortium.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
United Kingdom, USA
