Whole-brain calcium imaging with cellular resolution in freely behaving Caenorhabditis elegans

Large-scale neural recordings in freely moving animals are important for understanding how patterns of activity across a population of neurons generates animal behavior. Previously, recordings have been limited to either small brain regions or to immobilized or anesthetized animals exhibiting limited behavior. This work records from neurons with cellular resolution throughout the entire brain of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans during free locomotion. Neurons are found whose activity correlates with behaviors including forward and backward locomotion and turning. A growing body of evidence suggests that animal behavior is sometimes generated by the collective activity of many neurons. It is hoped that methods like this will provide quantitative datasets that yield insights into how brain-wide neural dynamics encode animal action and perception.