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Neuronal plasticity in nematode worms

Neuronal activity induces changes in the connectivity of a neuron called DVB in adult male nematode worms. This discovery provides an opportunity to study a fundamental process in this powerful model organism.
  1. Scott W. Emmons

    1. Scott W. Emmons is in the Department of Genetics and the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, New York 10461, USA.

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Central to the function of the nervous system is its dynamic ability to undergo changes, for instance in the physiological properties of its constituent neurons, the synaptic connections between them, and the characteristics of individual synapses. The hypothesis that neuronal activity can lead to such plasticity, first proposed by the neurophysiologist Donald Hebb in 1949, is fundamental to brain science, and has been confirmed in many studies1. On page 165, Hart and Hobert2 describe an example of experience-dependent neural plasticity in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, a species in which this phenomenon has been little studied3.

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Nature 553, 159-160 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-017-09031-5

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