LYMNAEA Brain Map
An Atlas of Identified Neurons in the Pond Snail Lymnaea StagnalisÂ
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About The Project
Thanks to their accessible nervous systems, molluscs have provided some of the most fundamental insights into how neural circuits generate and control behavior. Notably, their neurons are large and consistently positioned from one individual to the next, making the possibility of building a brain atlas realistic.
In this project we address this challenge by using a synchrotron (particle accelerator) source to carry out rapid high-resolution X-ray imaging of the whole brain of the pond snail, Lymnaea stagnalis. From this dataset, focusing on the part of the brain that controls feeding behavior, we then construct a detailed 3D atlas.
Our approach should readily generalize to CNS atlas-building in other model organisms, enabling the interrogation and sharing of brain structures across research groups for comparative and functional studies.
This website provides a summary of key neurons in the Lymnaea CNS that could be readily located using our atlas. For each cell-type we then carried out targeted intracellular electrophysiological recordings that enabled us to summarize the key functional properties. The selection of neurons we showcase here includes cell-types that have previously been identified and characterized by us and others over the last six decades, as well as new cell-types that we identified directly using the cell atlas.
Importantly, we want this to be a scalable database and we will update it with new cell-types as we identify them. We encourage others to contact us if they wish to suggest other cell-types to be included. In the first iteration of this resource, we have focused exclusively on the buccal feeding ganglia; however, given that we have synchrotron image stacks of the whole brain, future versions could be extended to include CNS areas.
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