Recordings of Caenorhabditis elegans locomotor behaviour following targeted ablation of single motorneurons

Sci Data. 2017 Oct 19:4:170156. doi: 10.1038/sdata.2017.156.

Abstract

Lesioning studies have provided important insight into the functions of brain regions in humans and other animals. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, with a small nervous system of 302 identified neurons, it is possible to generate lesions with single cell resolution and infer the roles of individual neurons in behaviour. Here we present a dataset of ~300 video recordings representing the locomotor behaviour of animals carrying single-cell ablations of 5 different motorneurons. Each file includes a raw video of approximately 27,000 frames; each frame has also been segmented to yield the position, contour, and body curvature of the tracked animal. These recordings can be further analysed using publicly-available software to extract features relevant to behavioural phenotypes. This dataset therefore represents a useful resource for probing the neural basis of behaviour in C. elegans, a resource we hope to augment in the future with ablation recordings for additional neurons.

Publication types

  • Dataset
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Caenorhabditis elegans*
  • Locomotion*
  • Motor Neurons*