Worm hits the edge of the dish
Does the mapped wiring alone turn a nose touch into a reversal?
What happens
A worm crawls on an agar plate. Every 20 ms the simulation checks whether its nose is pressed against the dish wall. If it is, the nose touch sensors ASH and FLP receive input, exactly as in the nose touch preset of the lab.
Crawl direction comes from the balance of forward (AVB, PVC) and backward (AVA, AVD, AVE) command interneurons. Head bending comes from dorsal and ventral head motor neurons. Nothing else is programmed: whether the worm backs away is decided by the connectome.
Switch the brain to a rewired control and watch the reflex disappear.
How the brain is wired to the world
The mapping is part of the experiment design. Everything between senses and motor output is the connectome.
- Nose pressed on the wall → ASH and FLP
- Steady locomotion drive → AVB (real worms crawl forward by default)
- Forward minus backward command activity → crawl speed and direction
- Dorsal minus ventral head motor activity → turning
Dataset: Cook et al. 2019 hermaphrodite connectome with Wang et al. 2024 transmitter atlas. About this dataset
Run it locally
Every experiment can also use the local runner, which simulates the brain on your own computer. It is required for connectomes too large for a browser.
git clone https://github.com/berkeyc/connectome-lab.git cd connectome-lab pip install -r local/requirements.txt python local/runner.py # listens on ws://localhost:8765
Then choose “Local runner” in the player controls and press Restart. Your browser may ask for permission to connect to a local device.