Follow the worm
For decades, scientists have studied Caenorhabditis elegans — tiny, transparent worms — for clues about how neurons develop and function. A new Harvard study suggests that the nervous system of the worm is much more complex than previously thought, allowing it to monitor its own motion. The findings suggest a path for research that may shed light on disorders such as schizophrenia. While most research into the worms’ neurons has shown that each performs as a single functional unit, Yun Zhang, associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at the Center for Brain Science, together with her colleagues Michael Hendricks, Heonick Ha, and Nicolas Maffey, has uncovered evidence that different compartments of a single neuron exhibit activities independently of one another. These activities represent self-motion signals. The work is described in a paper published on May 13 in Nature. Such “compartmentalized” neural activity is typically found only in higher organisms; however, Zhang...