There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
<p id="P2">Little is known about how animals integrate multiple sensory inputs in
natural environments
to balance avoidance of danger with approach to things of value. Furthermore, the
mechanistic link between internal physiological state and threat-reward decision making
remains poorly understood. Here we confronted
<i>C. elegans</i> worms with the decision whether to cross a hyperosmotic barrier
presenting the threat
of desiccation to reach a source of food odor. We identified a specific interneuron
that controls this decision via top-down extrasynaptic aminergic potentiation of the
primary osmosensory neurons to increase their sensitivity to the barrier. We also
establish that food deprivation increases the worm’s willingness to cross the dangerous
barrier by suppressing this pathway. These studies reveal a potentially general neural
circuit architecture for internal state control of threat-reward decision making.
</p>