AI Article Synopsis
- Animals make behavioral choices to navigate their environments, especially when responding to threats, using sensory information to guide decisions.
- In zebrafish, ongoing swimming can be suppressed when an escape response is triggered, facilitated by a switch between two different groups of motoneurons.
- This mechanism functions like a clutch, allowing the fish to smoothly transition between swimming and escaping, with the process enhanced by endocannabinoids that lower the threshold for escape and prolong the suppression of swimming.
Article Abstract
Animals constantly make behavioral choices to facilitate moving efficiently through their environment. When faced with a threat, animals make decisions in the midst of other ongoing behaviors through a context-dependent integration of sensory stimuli. In vertebrates, the mechanisms underlying behavioral selection are poorly understood. Here, we show that ongoing swimming in zebrafish is suppressed by escape. The selection of escape over swimming is mediated by switching between two distinct motoneuron pools. A hardwired circuit mediates this switch by acting as a clutch-like mechanism to disengage the swimming motoneuron pool and engage the escape motoneuron pool. Threshold for escape initiation is lowered and swimming suppression is prolonged by endocannabinoid neuromodulation. Thus, our results reveal a novel cellular mechanism involving a hardwired circuit supplemented with endocannabinoids acting as a clutch-like mechanism to engage/disengage distinct motor pools to ensure behavioral selection and a smooth execution of motor action sequences in a vertebrate system.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.042 | DOI Listing |
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