Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 11, 2026
Computational Analysis of the Caenorhabditis elegans Germline to Study the Distribution of Nuclei, Proteins, and the Cytoskeleton
Published on: April 19, 2018
Search for computational modules in the C. elegans brain
Markus Reigl1, Uri Alon, Dmitri B Chklovskii
1Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA. markus.reigl@gmx.net <markus.reigl@gmx.net>
Background:
Does the C. elegans nervous system contain multi-neuron computational modules that perform stereotypical functions? We attempt to answer this question by searching for recurring multi-neuron inter-connectivity patterns in the C. elegans nervous system's wiring diagram.
Results:
Our statistical analysis reveals that some inter-connectivity patterns containing two, three and four (but not five) neurons are significantly over-represented relative to the expectations based on the statistics of smaller inter-connectivity patterns.
Conclusions:
Over-represented patterns (or motifs) are candidates for computational modules that may perform stereotypical functions in the C. elegans nervous system. These modules may appear in other species and need to be investigated further.
