ArticleScience advances2017
Hierarchies in light sensing and dynamic interactions between ocular and extraocular sensory networks in a flatworm.
Article in Science advances, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Sensory Basis of Planarian Behavior.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Article
- Light in the Darkness: Responses to Light and Diel Activity Rhythm in an Eyeless Cave Flatworm (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Reduced adult stem cell fate specification led to eye reduction in cave planarians.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Neuropeptide-mediated temporal sensory filtering in a primordial nervous system.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Adaptive robustness through incoherent signaling mechanisms in a regenerative brain.Cell reports · 2024Article
- Neurophysiological measurements of planarian brain activity: a unique model for neuroscience research.Biology open · 2024Article
- Why study sleep in flatworms?Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2024Review
- Poly (A) binding protein 2 is critical for stem cell differentiation during regeneration in the planarianFrontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Article
- Photobehaviours guided by simple photoreceptor systems.Animal cognition · 2023Review
- Persistence of Nocturnality in Decapitated and Bisected Flatworms.Journal of biological rhythms · 2023Article
- Article
- Volumetric imaging of fast cellular dynamics with deep learning enhanced bioluminescence microscopy.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Head removal enhances planarian electrotaxis.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Planktonic sea urchin larvae change their swimming direction in response to strong photoirradiation.PLoS genetics · 2022Article
- Differences in neurotoxic outcomes of organophosphorus pesticides revealedFrontiers in toxicology · 2022Article
- Discovery of a body-wide photosensory array that matures in an adult-like animal and mediates eye-brain-independent movement and arousal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Regeneration of Planarian Auricles and Reestablishment of Chemotactic Ability.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2021Article
- Calcium ions in the aquatic environment drive planarians to food.Zoological letters · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Light sensing has independently evolved multiple times under diverse selective pressures but has been examined only in a handful among the millions of light-responsive organisms. Unsurprisingly, mechanistic insights into how differential light processing can cause distinct behavioral outputs are limited. We show how an organism can achieve complex light processing with a simple "eye" while also having independent but mutually interacting light sensing networks. Although planarian flatworms lack wavelength-specific eye photoreceptors, a 25 nm change in light wavelength is sufficient to completely switch their phototactic behavior. Quantitative photoassays, eye-brain confocal imaging, and RNA interference/knockdown studies reveal that flatworms are able to compare small differences in the amounts of light absorbed at the eyes through a single eye opsin and convert them into binary behavioral outputs. Because planarians can fully regenerate, eye-brain injury-regeneration studies showed that this acute light intensity sensing and processing are layered on simple light detection. Unlike intact worms, partially regenerated animals with eyes can sense light but cannot sense finer gradients. Planarians also show a "reflex-like," eye-independent (extraocular/whole-body) response to low ultraviolet A light, apart from the "processive" eye-brain-mediated (ocular) response. Competition experiments between ocular and extraocular sensory systems reveal dynamic interchanging hierarchies. In intact worms, cerebral ocular response can override the reflex-like extraocular response. However, injury-regeneration again offers a time window wherein both responses coexist, but the dominance of the ocular response is reversed. Overall, we demonstrate acute light intensity-based behavioral switching and two evolutionarily distinct but interacting light sensing networks in a regenerating organism.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.