The Omega delusion

The microscopic nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. Elegans) is an important model organism in the study of neurobiology. In particular, the study of its locomotion in normal and mutant worms continues to advance our understanding of the connections between genetics and motor control. 'Omega turns' are a typical worm behaviour that is treated as a highly stereotypical, discrete behaviour across the entire research literature. However no one has ever defined precisely what is an Omega turn. In this talk I am going to describe some earlier work that gave us the hint that Omegas are not a discrete behaviour, but rather form a continuum with other turning behaviours. Furthermore I will describe a new community survey that we want to conduct in order to study how consistently different labs have labelled Omega turns. It is my hope 'to look beyond the worm' in this talk and highlight in general the need for computationally tractable definitions of animal behaviour in neuroscience.