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bioRxiv · 10.1101/540880

A neurodevelopmental origin of behavioral individuality

Linneweber, G.·Andriatsilavo, M.·Dutta, S.·Hellbruegge, L.·Liu, G.·Ejsmont, R.·Fenk, L.·Straw, A.·Wernet, M.·Hiesinger, P. R.·Hassan, B.
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Abstract

The genome versus experience, or "Nature versus Nurture", debate has dominated our understanding of individual behavioral variation. A third factor, namely variation in complex behavior potentially due to non-heritable "developmental noise" in brain development, has been largely ignored. Using the Drosophila vinegar fly we demonstrate a causal link between variation in brain wiring due to developmental noise, and behavioral individuality. A population of visual system neurons called DCNs shows non-heritable, inter-individual variation in right/left wiring asymmetry, and control object orientation in freely walking flies. We show that DCN wiring asymmetry predicts an individuals object responses: the greater the asymmetry, the better the individual orients. Silencing DCNs abolishes correlations between anatomy and behavior, while inducing visual asymmetry via monocular deprivation "rescues" object orientation in DCN-symmetric individuals. One Sentence SummaryNon-heritable individual variation in neural circuit development underlies individual variability in behavior.

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Linneweber, G., Andriatsilavo, M., Dutta, S., Hellbruegge, L., Liu, G., Ejsmont, R., Fenk, L., Straw, A., Wernet, M., Hiesinger, P. R., Hassan, B.. 2019-02-05. A neurodevelopmental origin of behavioral individuality. https://doi.org/10.1101/540880

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