An entropic measure of diverse specialization highlights multifunctional neurons in annotated connectomes

The creation and curation of synaptic-level neuronal networks, or connectomes, enables the study of the relationship between neuronal structure and function. Topological characteristics of neuronal networks have been studied extensively. Separately, there have been considerable efforts to classify the morphology, cell types, and lineages of neurons. Here, we introduce a network metric that combines topological analysis with node metadata. This entropic quantity measures the diversity of incoming or outgoing connections to a node in terms of the metadata distribution. We find that in Caenorhabditis elegans, the top-scoring neurons (PVR, RMGL/R, DVA, CEP, ADE, URXR, RIGL, BAG, SMBDL) have known functions that integrate and disseminate multimodal information involved in sensorimotor functions. In the nerve cord of Drosophila melanogaster, we find that top-scoring neurons are embryonic neurons located in the abdominal neuropil, where sensorimotor coordination is required for complex innate behavior such as mating.