scholarly journals Clues to basis of exploratory behaviour of the C. elegans snout from head somatotropy

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1758) ◽  
pp. 20170367 ◽  
Author(s):  
John White

Wave propagation during locomotory movements of Caenorhabditis elegans is constrained to a single dorso/ventral plane. By contrast, the tip of the head (snout) can make rapid exploratory movements in all directions relative to the body axis. These extra degrees of freedom are probably important for animals to seek and identify desirable passages in the interstices of the three-dimensional matrix of soil particles, their usual habitat. The differences in degrees of freedom of movement between snout and body are reflected in the innervation of the musculature. Along the length of the body, the two quadrants of dorsal muscle receive common innervation as do the two quadrants of ventral muscle. By contrast, muscles in the snout have an octagonal arrangement of innervation. It is likely that the exploratory behaviour of the snout is mediated by octant-specific motor and sensory neurons, together with their associated interneurons. The well-defined anatomical structure and neural circuitry of the snout together with behavioural observations should facilitate the implementation of models of the neural basis of exploratory movements, which could lead to an understanding of the basis of this relatively complex behaviour, a behaviour that has similarities to foraging in some vertebrates. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Connectome to behaviour: modelling C. elegans at cellular resolution’.

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 1037-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein Nourmohammadi ◽  
Jafar Keighobadi ◽  
Mohsen Bahrami

Biomedical applications of swimming microrobots comprising of drug delivery, microsurgery and disease monitoring make the research more interesting in MEMS technology. In this paper, inspired by the flagellar motion of microorganisms like bacteria and also considering the recent attempts in one/two-dimensional modelling of swimming microrobots, a three degrees-of-freedom swimming microrobot is developed. In the proposed design, the body of the swimming microrobot is driven by multiple prokaryotic flagella which produce a propulsion force through rotating in the fluid media. The presented swimming microrobot has the capability of doing three-dimensional manoeuvres and moving along three-dimensional reference paths. In this paper, following dynamical modelling of the microrobot motion, a suitable controller is designed for path tracking purposes. Based on the resistive-force theory, the generated propulsion force by the flagella is modelled. The feedback linearization method is applied for perfect tracking control of the swimming microrobot on the desired motion trajectories. It is seen that, by the use of three flagella, the microrobot is able to perform three-dimensional manoeuvres. From the simulation results, the tracking performance of the designed control system is perfectly guaranteed which enables the microrobot to perform the desired three-dimensional manoeuvres and follow the desired trajectory.


2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1758) ◽  
pp. 20170376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey Palyanov ◽  
Sergey Khayrulin ◽  
Stephen D. Larson

To better understand how a nervous system controls the movements of an organism, we have created a three-dimensional computational biomechanical model of the Caenorhabditis elegans body based on real anatomical structure. The body model is created with a particle system–based simulation engine known as Sibernetic, which implements the smoothed particle–hydrodynamics algorithm. The model includes an elastic body-wall cuticle subject to hydrostatic pressure. This cuticle is then driven by body-wall muscle cells that contract and relax, whose positions and shape are mapped from C. elegans anatomy, and determined from light microscopy and electron micrograph data. We show that by using different muscle activation patterns, this model is capable of producing C. elegans -like behaviours, including crawling and swimming locomotion in environments with different viscosities, while fitting multiple additional known biomechanical properties of the animal.  This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Connectome to behaviour: modelling C. elegans at cellular resolution’.


Free-flying houseflies have been filmed simultaneously from two sides. The orientation of the flies’ body axes in three-dimensional space can be seen on the films. A method is presented for the reconstruction of the flies’ movements in a fly-centred coordinate system, relative to an external coordinate system and relative to the airstream. The flies are regarded as three-dimensionally rigid bodies. They move with respect to the six degrees of freedom they thus possess. The analysis of the organization of the flight motor from the kinematic data leads to the following conclusions: the sideways movements can, at least qualitatively, be explained by taking into account the sideways forces resulting from rolling the body about the long axis and the influence of inertia. Thus, the force vector generated by the flight motor is most probably located in the fly’s midsagittal plane. The direction of this vector can be varied by the fly in a restricted range only. In contrast, the direction of the torque vector can be freely adjusted by the fly. No coupling between the motor force and the torques is indicated. Changes of flight direction may be explained by changes in the orientation of the body axes: straight flight at an angle of sideslip differing from zero is due to rolling. Sideways motion during the banked turns as well as the decrease of translation velocity observed in curves are a consequence of the inertial forces and rolling. The results are discussed with reference to studies about the aerodynamic performance of insects and the constraints for aerial pursuit.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 1821-1834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vadim Y. Roschin ◽  
Alexander A. Frolov ◽  
Yves Burnod ◽  
Marc A. Maier

This letter presents a novel unsupervised sensory matching learning technique for the development of an internal representation of three-dimensional information. The representation is invariant with respect to the sensory modalities involved. Acquisition of the internal representation is demonstrated with a neural network model of a sensorimotor system of a simple model creature, consisting of a tactile-sensitive body and a multiple-degrees-of-freedom arm with proprioceptive sensitivity. Acquisition of the 3D representation as well as a distributed representation of the body scheme, occurs through sensorimotor interactions (i.e., the sensory-motor experience of the creature). Convergence of the learning is demonstrated through computer simulations for the model creature with a 7-DoF arm and a spherical body covered by 20 tactile fields.


Author(s):  
Alireza Ramezani ◽  
Jonathan W. Hurst ◽  
Kaveh Akbari Hamed ◽  
J. W. Grizzle

This paper develops feedback controllers for walking in 3D, on level ground, with energy efficiency as the performance objective. Assume The Robot Is A Sphere (ATRIAS) 2.1 is a new robot that has been designed for the study of 3D bipedal locomotion, with the aim of combining energy efficiency, speed, and robustness with respect to natural terrain variations in a single platform. The robot is highly underactuated, having 6 actuators and, in single support, 13 degrees of freedom. Its sagittal plane dynamics are designed to embody the spring loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP), which has been shown to provide a dynamic model of the body center of mass during steady running gaits of a wide diversity of terrestrial animals. A detailed dynamic model is used to optimize walking gaits with respect to the cost of mechanical transport (CMT), a dimensionless measure of energetic efficiency, for walking speeds ranging from 0.5 (m/s) to 1.4 (m/s). A feedback controller is designed that stabilizes the 3D walking gaits, despite the high degree of underactuation of the robot. The 3D results are illustrated in simulation. In experiments on a planarized (2D) version of the robot, the controller yielded stable walking.


Author(s):  
Y.-M. Scolan ◽  
A. A. Korobkin

The water entry of a three-dimensional smooth body into initially calm water is examined. The body can move freely in its 6 d.f. and may also change its shape over time. During the early stage of penetration, the shape of the body is approximated by a surface of double curvature and the radii of curvature may vary over time. Hydrodynamic loads are calculated by the Wagner theory. It is shown that the water entry problem with arbitrary kinematics of the body motion, can be reduced to the vertical entry problem with a modified vertical displacement of the body and an elliptic region of contact between the liquid and the body surface. Low pressure occurrence is determined; this occurrence can precede the appearance of cavitation effects. Hydrodynamic forces are analysed for a rigid ellipsoid entering the water with 3 d.f. Experimental results with an oblique impact of elliptic paraboloid confirm the theoretical findings. The theoretical developments are detailed in this paper, while an application of the model is described in electronic supplementary materials.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Alaa Abdulrahman ◽  
Kamran Iqbal ◽  
Gannon White

Physiologically and biomechanically, the human body represents a complicated system with an abundance of degrees of freedom (DOF). When developing mathematical representations of the body, a researcher has to decide on how many of those DOF to include in the model. Though accuracy can be enhanced at the cost of complexity by including more DOF, their necessity must be rigorously examined. In this study a planar seven-segment human body walking model with single DOF joints was developed. A reference point was added to the model to track the body’s global position while moving. Due to the kinematic instability of the pelvis, the top of the head was selected as the reference point, which also assimilates the vestibular sensor position. Inverse dynamics methods were used to formulate and solve the equations of motion based on Newton-Euler formulae. The torques and ground reaction forces generated by the planar model during a regular gait cycle were compared with similar results from a more complex three-dimensional OpenSim model with muscles, which resulted in correlation errors in the range of 0.9–0.98. The close comparison between the two torque outputs supports the use of planar models in gait studies.


Author(s):  
Paul WJ Henselmans ◽  
Gerwin Smit ◽  
Paul Breedveld

One of the most prominent drivers in the development of surgical procedures is the will to reduce their invasiveness, attested by minimally invasive surgery being the gold standards in many surgical procedures and natural orifices transluminal endoscopic surgery gaining acceptance. A logical next step in this pursuit is the introduction of hyper-redundant instruments that can insert themselves along multi-curved paths referred to as Follow-the-Leader motion. In the current state of the art, two different types of Follow-the-Leader instruments can be distinguished. One type of instrument is robotized; the movements of the shaft are controlled from outside the patient by actuators, for example, electric motors, and a controller storing a virtual track of the desired path. The other type of instrument is more mechanical; the movements of the shaft are controlled from inside the patient by a physical track that guides the shaft along the desired path. While in the robotized approach all degrees of freedom of the shaft require an individual actuator, the mechanical approach makes the number of degrees of freedom independent from the number of actuators. A desirable feature as an increasing number of actuators will inevitably drive up costs and increase the footprint of an instrument. Building the physical track inside the body does, however, impede miniaturization of the shaft’s diameter. This article introduces a new fully mechanical approach for Follow-the-Leader motion using a pre-determined physical track that is placed outside the body. This new approach was validated with a prototype called MemoFlex, which supports a Ø5 mm shaft (standard size in minimally invasive surgery) that contains 28-degrees-of-freedom and utilizes a simple steel rod as its physical track. Even though the performance of the MemoFlex leaves room for improvement, especially when following multiple curves, it does validate the proposed concept for Follow-the-Leader motion in three-dimensional space.


1963 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. B. Glauert

The most notable feature of the magnetohydrodynamic flow at large distances from a three-dimensional body is the formation of two wakes, within which vorticity and electric current are confined. In this paper results are obtained for the effective diffusivity and the relation between current and vorticity in each wake, for the balance between the strengths of the disturbances in the wakes and in the irrotational current-free flow outside, and for the lift and drag forces acting on the body. The final answers take the form of remarkably simple extensions of the corresponding formulae for non-conducting flow. In spite of the extra wake and the presence of a magnetic as well as a velocity field, the flow perturbation at large distances still has only three degrees of freedom.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Spurrett

Abstract Comprehensive accounts of resource-rational attempts to maximise utility shouldn't ignore the demands of constructing utility representations. This can be onerous when, as in humans, there are many rewarding modalities. Another thing best not ignored is the processing demands of making functional activity out of the many degrees of freedom of a body. The target article is almost silent on both.


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