Coherent Movements Research Articles

Ultrafast structural transition and electron-phonon/phonon–phonon coupling in antimony revealed by nonadiabatic molecular dynamics

Real-time time-dependent density-functional theory molecular dynamics (rt-TDDFT-MD) reveals the nonadiabatic dynamics of the ultrafast photoinduced structural transition in a typical phase-change material antimony (Sb) with Peierls distortion (PD). As the excitation intensity increases from 3.54% to 5.00%, three distinct structural transition behaviors within 1 ps are observed: no PD flipping, nonvolatile-like PD flipping, and nonstop back-and-forward PD flipping. Analyses on electron-phonon and phonon-phonon couplings indicate that the excitation-activated coherent A1gphonon mode by electron-phonon coupling drives the structural transition within several hundred femtoseconds. Then, the energy of coherent motions are transformed into that of random thermal motions via phonon-phonon coupling, which prevents the A1g-mode-like coherent structure oscillations. The electron-phonon coupling and coherent motions will be enhanced with increasing the excitation intensity. Therefore, a moderate excitation intensity that can balance the coherent and decoherent thermal movements will result in a nonvolatile-like PD flipping. These findings illustrate important roles of nonadiabatic electron-phonon/phonon-phonon couplings in the ultrafast laser-induced structural transitions in materials with PD, offering insights for manipulating their structures and properties by light.

Strain fields and solitary strain waves as determining factors for the cross-sectional geometry of mouse incisor enamel

Dental enamel in the mouse incisor is the subject of one of the most detailed histological records of cell motion and action during the formation and shaping of any organ in any species. We use the rich data to test the hypothesis that the shape of the enamel body on a perpendicular cross-section of the long, sabre-like incisor can be predicted by assuming that the formative ameloblast cells respond to strain and strain-rate cues that inform individual cells of position and time. The strain field is generated when growth of the forming enamel stretches the ameloblast population. Simultaneously, the strain is relaxed by coherent wavy cell movements. We hypothesize that wave motion arises when cells maintain homeostasis in their area density, with the rate of their recovery from a density perturbation assumed proportional to the magnitude of the perturbation. Density homeostasis gives rise to a nonlinear wave equation, which results in solitary waves propagating within computed strain fields. We predict the final thickness of the enamel by assuming ameloblasts stop generating enamel after they experience a critical strain condition. The thickness profile vs position is correctly determined to within a constant factor, which is the unknown rate constant in the wave equation. When the rate constant is calibrated by the peak amplitude of the thickness profile, the commencement of enamel formation (the onset of ameloblast secretion) vs position is then also correctly predicted by the passage of solitary waves, implying that the strain jump within the solitary wave may be the trigger for the onset of secretion.

The Role of Coherent Airflow Structures on the Incipient Aeolian Entrainment of Coarse Particles

AbstractThe role of coherent airflow structures capable of setting gravel‐sized particles in motion is studied theoretically and experimentally. Specifically, a micromechanical model based on energy conservation is proposed to describe the incipient motion of large‐particles ranging from rocking (incomplete entrainment) to incipient rolling (full entrainment). Wind tunnel experiments were conducted on an aerodynamically rough bed surface under near‐threshold airflow conditions. Synchronous signals of airflow velocities upwind of the test particles and particle displacement are measured using a hot film anemometer and a laser distance sensor, respectively, from which coherent airflow structures (extracted via quadrant analysis) and particle movements are interlinked. It is suggested that the incipient motion of gravel‐sized particles (rocking and rolling) may result from sufficiently energetic sweep events corresponding to aerodynamic drag forces in excess of the local micro‐topography resistance. However, full entrainment in rolling mode should satisfy the presented work‐based criterion. Furthermore, using an appropriate probabilistic frame, the proposed criterion may be suitable for describing processes of energy transfer from the wind to the granular soil surface, ranging from the creep transport of gravels to the “mechanical sieving” of mega‐ripples, as well as the transport of light anthropogenic debris (such as plastics).

Dynamic three-dimensional structures of a metal–organic framework captured with femtosecond serial crystallography

Crystalline systems consisting of small-molecule building blocks have emerged as promising materials with diverse applications. It is of great importance to characterize not only their static structures but also the conversion of their structures in response to external stimuli. Femtosecond time-resolved crystallography has the potential to probe the real-time dynamics of structural transitions, but, thus far, this has not been realized for chemical reactions in non-biological crystals. In this study, we applied time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography (TR-SFX), a powerful technique for visualizing protein structural dynamics, to a metal–organic framework, consisting of Fe porphyrins and hexazirconium nodes, and elucidated its structural dynamics. The time-resolved electron density maps derived from the TR-SFX data unveil trifurcating structural pathways: coherent oscillatory movements of Zr and Fe atoms, a transient structure with the Fe porphyrins and Zr6 nodes undergoing doming and disordering movements, respectively, and a vibrationally hot structure with isotropic structural disorder. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of using TR-SFX to study chemical systems.

The preoptic area and dorsal habenula jointly support homeostatic navigation in larval zebrafish

Animals must maintain physiological processes within an optimal temperature range despite changes in their environment. Through behavioral assays, whole-brain functional imaging, and neural ablations, we show that larval zebrafish, an ectothermic vertebrate, achieves thermoregulation through homeostatic navigation-non-directional and directional movements toward the temperature closest to its physiological setpoint. A brain-wide circuit encompassing several brain regions enables this behavior. We identified the preoptic area of the hypothalamus (PoA) as a key brain structure in triggering non-directional reorientation when thermal conditions are worsening. This result shows an evolutionary conserved role of the PoA as principal thermoregulator of the brain also in ectotherms. We further show that the habenula (Hb)-interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) circuit retains a short-term memory of the sensory history to support the generation of coherent directed movements even in the absence of continuous sensory cues. We finally provide evidence that this circuit may not be exclusive for temperature but may convey a more abstract representation of relative valence of physiologically meaningful stimuli regardless of their specific identity to enable homeostatic navigation.

MOVIN: Real‐time Motion Capture using a Single LiDAR

AbstractRecent advancements in technology have brought forth new forms of interactive applications, such as the social metaverse, where end users interact with each other through their virtual avatars. In such applications, precise full‐body tracking is essential for an immersive experience and a sense of embodiment with the virtual avatar. However, current motion capture systems are not easily accessible to end users due to their high cost, the requirement for special skills to operate them, or the discomfort associated with wearable devices. In this paper, we present MOVIN, the data‐driven generative method for real‐time motion capture with global tracking, using a single LiDAR sensor. Our autoregressive conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE) model learns the distribution of pose variations conditioned on the given 3D point cloud from LiDAR. As a central factor for high‐accuracy motion capture, we propose a novel feature encoder to learn the correlation between the historical 3D point cloud data and global, local pose features, resulting in effective learning of the pose prior. Global pose features include root translation, rotation, and foot contacts, while local features comprise joint positions and rotations. Subsequently, a pose generator takes into account the sampled latent variable along with the features from the previous frame to generate a plausible current pose. Our framework accurately predicts the performer's 3D global information and local joint details while effectively considering temporally coherent movements across frames. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our architecture through quantitative and qualitative evaluations, comparing it against state‐of‐the‐art methods. Additionally, we implement a real‐time application to showcase our method in real‐world scenarios. MOVIN dataset is available at https://movin3d.github.io/movin_pg2023/https://movin3d.github.io/movin_pg2023/">https://movin3d.github.io/movin_pg2023/.

Surfacing rates, swim speeds, and patterns of movement of Antarctic blue whales

During three surveys in the austral summers of 2013, 2015, 2019, data on Antarctic blue whale blow rates, dive times, swim speeds, and broadscale movements were collected using video photogrammetric tracking and intra-voyage photo-identification. A total of 24.4 hours of video observations were suitable for blow interval or movement analysis. Similar to other blue whale populations, Antarctic blue whale dive behaviour comprised a sequence of short dives followed by a long dive with a mean dive time for short dives of 17.6 s, and a mean long dive time of 189.3 s. Two separate methods were used to estimate the average blow rate for Antarctic blue whales, giving estimates of 59.7 and 63.2 blows per hour. The overall mean swim speed over the course of all suitable video track segments was 1.59 ms-1, but there were significant differences between years in the mean of the overall movement rate for each track; average movement rates were lower in 2015 compared to 2013 and 2019 (0.90 ms-1, 1.84 and 1.55 ms-1respectively), with higher rates of turning in 2015. In 2019, there was faster overall movement through the study area in a consistent direction. The total number of photo-identified blue whales re-sighted intra-season in 2013 was nine (out of 50 identified individuals); in 2015 it was seven (out of 46); in 2019 two (out of 25). Whales remained for several days with little overall movement within the 2015 study area, whereas they were moving through the study area in 2019, which would explain the low number of intra-season resights. The predominant heading in 2019 was towards the area of Antarctic blue whale concentrations at the entrance to the Ross Sea observed in previous years. The photo-identification data also show a high proportion of resighted whales with coherent movements. This suggests that Antarctic blue whales might travel together, at least over periods of several days or sometimes up to a month. The differences between behaviours in 2015 and 2019 in particular may be related to differences in the characteristics of krill swarms between the study areas.

SkinMixer

We propose a novel technique to compose new 3D animated models, such as videogame characters, by combining pieces from existing ones. Our method works on production-ready rigged, skinned, and animated 3D models to reassemble new ones. We exploit mix-and-match operations on the skeletons to trigger the automatic creation of a new mesh, linked to the new skeleton by a set of skinning weights and complete with a set of animations. The resulting model preserves the quality of the input meshings (which can be quad-dominant and semi-regular), skinning weights (inducing believable deformation), and animations, featuring coherent movements of the new skeleton. Our method enables content creators to reuse valuable, carefully designed assets by assembling new ready-to-use characters while preserving most of the hand-crafted subtleties of models authored by digital artists. As shown in the accompanying video, it allows for drastically cutting the time needed to obtain the final result.

DanceFormer: Music Conditioned 3D Dance Generation with Parametric Motion Transformer

Generating 3D dances from music is an emerged research task that benefits a lot of applications in vision and graphics. Previous works treat this task as sequence generation, however, it is challenging to render a music-aligned long-term sequence with high kinematic complexity and coherent movements. In this paper, we reformulate it by a two-stage process, i.e., a key pose generation and then an in-between parametric motion curve prediction, where the key poses are easier to be synchronized with the music beats and the parametric curves can be efficiently regressed to render fluent rhythm-aligned movements. We named the proposed method as DanceFormer, which includes two cascading kinematics-enhanced transformer-guided networks (called DanTrans) that tackle each stage, respectively. Furthermore, we propose a large-scale music conditioned 3D dance dataset, called PhantomDance, that is accurately labeled by experienced animators rather than reconstruction or motion capture. This dataset also encodes dances as key poses and parametric motion curves apart from pose sequences, thus benefiting the training of our DanceFormer. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method, even trained by existing datasets, can generate fluent, performative, and music-matched 3D dances that surpass previous works quantitatively and qualitatively. Moreover, the proposed DanceFormer, together with the PhantomDance dataset, are seamlessly compatible with industrial animation software, thus facilitating the adaptation for various downstream applications.

Spatially coherent diffusion of human RNA Pol II depends on transcriptional state rather than chromatin motion

ABSTRACT Gene transcription by RNA polymerase II (RNAPol II) is a tightly regulated process in the genomic, temporal, and spatial context. Recently, we have shown that chromatin exhibits spatially coherently moving regions over the entire nucleus, which is enhanced by transcription. Yet, it remains unclear how the mobility of RNA Pol II molecules is affected by transcription regulation and whether this response depends on the coordinated chromatin movement. We applied our Dense Flow reConstruction and Correlation method to analyze nucleus-wide coherent movements of RNA Pol II in living human cancer cells. We observe a spatially coherent movement of RNA Pol II molecules over 1 μm, which depends on transcriptional activity. Inducing transcription in quiescent cells decreased the coherent motion of RNA Pol II. We then quantify the spatial correlation length of RNA Pol II in the context of DNA motion. RNA Pol II and chromatin spatially coherent motions respond oppositely to transcriptional activities. Our study holds the potential of studying the chromatin environment in different nuclear processes.

The effects of using stroboscopic training on sports performance

Stroboscopic training is a form of athletic training during which the individual performs a motor task under intermittently opaque visual conditions. The purpose of this training is to enhance subsequent performance under normal visual conditions as a result of shifting attentional focus within the multisensory integration process. The training performed with the help of this technology that uses specially designed glasses increases the contribution of other somatosensory afferents to motor control by refocusing the individual’s attention on proprioceptive feedback. Other benefits of stroboscopic training include improved short-term visual memory, improved capacity for anticipation as well as increased ability to focus in general but particularly on the central visual field and thus produce coherent movements. The current paper is a metaanalysis of the literature on stroboscopic training and its benefits for professional sport. In sports using stroboscopic (strobe) glasses, for example in hockey, basketball, football, volleyball, baseball or tennis, positive effects on some skills have been identified and training and testing protocols have been described. The aim of this paper is to highlight some practical and methodological benchmarks resulting from the use of stroboscopic training in various sports, and then transfer them to climbing training in order to enhance performance in this sport.

An Automatic Rehabilitation Assessment System for Hand Function Based on Leap Motion and Ensemble Learning

For stroke patients, hand function assessment is an important part of the hand rehabilitation process. The hand function assessment, however, requires the patient to complete a series of actions under the guidance of the therapist who then scores the patient’s performance. This type of assessment is both time-consuming and highly subjective. Therefore, in order to achieve a fast, objective and accurate assessment, this paper adopts a non-contact infrared imaging device, Leap Motion, to measure the patient’s motion information and then uses these motion information to infer the hand’s rehabilitation level. This paper improves the traditional way of hand function assessment from the following aspects. Only three coherent movements (finger opposition, lift wrist and stretch fingers) are required to complete the assessment, which makes the assessment time shorter and the assessment process easier. At the same time, an assessment algorithm based on the Ensemble Learning is proposed and integrated into the automatic hand function assessment system. In addition, the virtual reality game has been implemented in the assessment system to ensure a satisfactory interaction with patients, which makes the assessment process more interesting and convenient. Using this system, 50 stroke patients underwent clinical trials with the Brunnstrom and Fugl-Meyer assessment scales. The matching rate between the automatic assessment result and the manual Brunnstrom assessment result is 92%, while the matching rate with the Fugl-Meyer assessment result is 82%. Furthermore, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test and Kappa test are also used to validate the consistency between the automatic assessment results and the manual assessment results. These experiments illustrate that this automatic assessment system is fast, comfortable and reliable.

Present-day deformation in the Upper Rhine Graben from GNSS data

ABSTRACT The Upper Rhine Graben (URG) undergoes continuous microseismicity recorded by seismic monitoring networks and moderate-magnitude earthquakes, such as in the zone north of the Alpine front, which includes the Jura thrust front, the Vosges, the Black Forest, the Swabian Jura and the Alsace plain. The surface velocity field is a good indication of the occurrence and location of strain gradients likely associated with seismogenic structures. To explore that possibility, we use long time-series of displacements measured from 2002 to 2018 with the dense GURN network (GNSS URG Network). The processing based on double differences of phase measurements offers an up-to-date surface velocity field of the URG and surrounding areas. The surface velocity field relative to the Eurasia reference frame (ITR2014) points out some areas where coherent movements are present for groups of stations. The heterogeneous velocity field across the Rhine Graben (Vosges, URG, Black Forest and Swabian Jura) displays velocity values below 0.2 mm yr−1. We compute a deformation field from the GNSS velocities to link the deformation to the spatial distribution of earthquakes in the Rhine Graben. The earthquakes are concentrated south of an east–west line passing through Strasbourg to the Alpine front. Instrumental and historical seismicity presents spatial similarities in the Vosges and Swabian Jura. Considering the consistent northward movement observed in the Alpine front, we suggest that the strong seismicity in the south of the URG is caused by the shortening of the Alps. North of the URG, the seismicity is more dispersed where the velocity field does not show coherent movements.

‘Doing’ competitive swimming: Exploring the skilled practices of the competitive swimming lifeworld

Despite a developing literature on various facets of sporting embodiment, there is currently a research lacuna with regard to in-depth analyses of actually ‘doing’ sporting activities within specific physical cultures. In this article, we address that gap by drawing on a developing theoretical literature in sociological phenomenology to investigate a particular physical–cultural domain. Here, we present and analyse data from an ethnographic study of competitive swimmers undertaken in the UK. Responding to calls to explore the domain of ‘body pedagogics’, we investigate the embodied work involved in the skilled practice of ‘doing’ and learning how to ‘do’ competitive swimming. This embodied work plays a key part in the swimmers’ ability to inhabit the competitive swimming lifeworld. In the analysis, we highlight how the acquisition and ‘habituation’ of these body techniques and skilled behaviours are not achieved simply through the repetitive rehearsal of coherent movements over time. These processes are complex, demanding practical experimentation, discovery and the ability to adapt constantly to changes in the environment and the swimmer’s own corporeality.

Specific Parameter-Free Global Optimization to Speed Up Setting and Avoid Factors Interactions

Meta-heuristics utilizing numerous parameters are more complicated than meta-heuristics with a couple of parameters for various reasons. In essence, the effort expected to tune the strategy-particular parameters is far more prominent as the quantity of parameters increases and furthermore, complex algorithms are liable for the presence of further parameter interactions. Jaya meta-heuristic does not involve any strategy-specific parameters and is a one-stage technique. It has demonstrated its effectiveness compared to major types of meta-heuristics and it introduces various points of interest, such as its easy deployment and set-up in industrial applications and its low complexity to be studied. In this work, a new meta-heuristic, Enhanced Jaya (EJaya) is proposed to overcome the inconsistency of Jaya in diverse situations, introducing coherent attraction and repulsion movements and restrained intensity for flight. Comparative results of EJaya in a set of benchmark problems including statistical tests show that it is feasible to increase the accuracy, scalability and exploitation capability of Jaya while keeping its specific parameter-free feature. EJaya is especially suitable for a priori undefined characteristics optimization functions or applications where the set-up time of the optimization process is critical and parameters tuning and interactions must be avoided.

Deformation mechanisms and ductility enhancement in core-shell Cu@Ni nanoporous metals

In recent years, studies have shown that Nanoporous (NP) metals deform in a relatively brittle manner under tensile loading. We investigated the mechanical performance of NP structures under tensile loading using atomistic simulations. We compared the stress strain curves for two types of NP structures: a single crystal Cu NP structure and a core–shell Cu NP structure with a coating layer of Ni. Our results suggested that the core–shell structure exhibits increased Young’s modulus and yield strength, probably due to the addition of the stiffer Ni atoms. The core–shell structure also exhibits an extensive enhancement in ductility with decreased strain-softening rate, reduced strain localization and delayed ultimate failure of the structure. Our simulations revealed that the enhancement of ductility could be attributed to three different mechanisms: the energy barrier of the coherent interface hindering dislocation movements, and increased accumulation of sessile dislocations as well as the nucleation and propagation of twin boundaries in connecting nodes in core–shell structure compared to single crystal Cu NP. All these mechanisms worked collectively and resulted in a stronger and more ductile NP metal.

An Exploratory Framework for Cyclone Identification and Tracking.

Analyzing depressions plays an important role in meteorology, especially in the study of cyclones. In particular, the study of the temporal evolution of cyclones requires a robust depression tracking framework. To cope with this demand we propose a pipeline for the exploration of cyclones and their temporal evolution. This entails a generic framework for their identification and tracking. The fact that depressions and cyclones are not well-defined objects and their shape and size characteristics change over time makes this task especially challenging. Our method combines the robustness of topological approaches and the detailed tracking information from optical flow analysis. At first cyclones are identified within each time step based on well-established topological concepts. Then candidate tracks are computed from an optical flow field. These tracks are clustered within a moving time window to distill dominant coherent cyclone movements, which are then forwarded to a final tracking step. In contrast to previous methods our method requires only a few intuitive parameters. An integration into an exploratory framework helps in the study of cyclone movement by identifying smooth, representative tracks. Multiple case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in tracking cyclones, both in the northern and southern hemisphere.

Paleomagnetic data for Siberia and Baltica in the context of testing some geodynamic models of the formation of the Central Asian Mobile Belt

The synthesis of the paleomagnetic data for the Siberian (Siberia) and East European (Baltica) platforms shows that since the Early Paleozoic they could have experienced coherent movements as a part of consolidated continental agglomeration (a composite continent), which also includes the Arctida continent. Based on the paleomagnetic data, the relative positions of the Siberia and Baltica during the Ordovician is reconstructed, and a series of paleogeographical reconstructions describing the drift of the composite continent is suggested. The results of the lithologic–facial analysis of the sedimentation settings within the Ordovician basins of the Siberian and East European platforms and paleoclimatic markers are consistent with the suggested configuration and paleogeographical position of the composite continent. The suggested reconstructions and the ages of detrital zircons from the Early Paleozoic complexes of the platform margins and some objects of the Central Asian Mobile Belt (CAMB) reasonably well agree with the hypothesis (Sengor et al., 1993) which interprets the formation of the structure of CAMB Paleozoides as a result of the evolution of the island arc stretching along the margins of Siberia and Baltica.

Impact of the Metallic Crystalline Structure on the Properties of Nanocrystals and Their Mesoscopic Assemblies.

The spontaneous assembly of uniform-sized globular entities into ordered arrays is a universal phenomenon observed for objects with diameters spanning a broad range of length scales. These extend from the atomic scale (10-8 cm), through molecular and macromolecular scales with proteins, synthetic low polymers, and colloidal crystals (∼10-6 cm), to the wavelength of visible light (∼10-5 cm). The associated concepts of sphere packing have had an influence in diverse fields ranging from pure geometrical analysis to architectural models or ideals. Self-assembly of atoms, supramolecules, or nanocrystals into ordered functional superstructures is a universal process and prevalent topic in science. About five billion years ago in the early solar system, highly uniform magnetite particles of a few hundred nanometers in size were assembled in 3D arrays.1 Thirty million years ago, silicate particles with submicrometer size were self-organized in the form of opal.2 Opal is colorless when composed of disordered silicate microparticles whereas it shows specific reflectivity when particles order in arrays. Nowadays, nanocrystals, characterized by a narrow size distribution and coated with alkyl chains to maintain their integrity, self-assemble to form crystallographic orders called supracrystals. Nanocrystals and supracrystals are arrangements of highly ordered atoms and nanocrystals, respectively. The morphologies of nanocrystals, supracrystals, and minerals are similar at various scales from nanometer to millimeter scale.3,4 Such suprastructures, which enable the design of novel materials, are expected to become one of the main driving forces in material research for the 21st century.5,6 Nanocrystals vibrate coherently in a supracrystal as atoms in a nanocrystal. Longitudinal acoustic phonons are detected in supracrystals as with atomic crystals, where longitudinal acoustic phonons propagate through coherent movements of atoms of the lattice out of their equilibrium positions. These vibrational properties show a full analogy with atomic crystals: In supracrystals, atoms are replaced by (uncompressible) nanocrystals and atomic bonds by coating agents (carbon chains), which act like mechanical springs holding together the nanocrystals. Electronic properties of very thick (more than a few micrometers) supracrystals reveal homogeneous conductance with the fingerprint of the isolated nanocrystal. Triangular single crystals formed by heat-induced (50 °C) coalescence of thin supracrystals deposited on a substrate as epitaxial growth of metal particles on a substrate with specific orientation produced by ultrahigh vacuum (UHV). Here we demonstrate that marked changes can occur in the chemical and physical properties of nanocrystals differing by their nanocrystallinity, that is, their crystalline structure. Furthermore, the properties (mechanical, growth processes) of supracrystals also change with the nanocrystallinity of the nanoparticles used as building blocks.

Closing the loop: optimal stimulation of C. elegans neuronal network via adaptive control to exhibit full body movements

The Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) worm is a well-studied biological organism model. The nervous system of C. elegans is particularly appealing to study, since it is a tractable fully functional neuronal network for which electro-physical connectivity map (connectome) is fully resolved [1,2]. In a recent work, we succeeded in establishing a computational dynamical model for the C. elegans nervous system and showed that robust oscillatory movements in motor neurons along the body can be invoked by constant current excitation of command sensory neurons (e.g. PLM neurons associated with forward crawling) and that their activation corresponds to low-dimensional Hopf bifurcation [3]. While these first results validated the model, it is exciting to learn how the nervous system transforms its oscillatory dynamics to the muscles to support robust full body movements (e.g. forward crawling) [4]. Moreover, using methods generically applicable to other neuronal circuits, it is intriguing to understand the optimal sensory stimulations that cause these movements to persist. We explore these questions by modeling the C. elegans musculature as a viscoelastic rod with discrete rigid segments [5], and map the neuronal dynamics such that they activate the muscles and deform the rod (Fig. ​(Fig.1A).1A). When motor neuron activity stimulates muscles [2], this activation is translated into force applied to the rod, which moves in accordance with the physical properties of C. elegans. By stimulating the command PLM neurons, we establish for the first time that motor neuron dynamics are indeed producing coherent oscillatory full body movements that resemble forward crawling (Fig. ​(Fig.1B,1B, videos available here: http://faculty.washington.edu/shlizee/celegans/). Figure 1 A: Structure of viscoelastic rod B: Viscoelastic rod-based simulation of C. elegans crawling during PLM excitation, videos available here C: Loop feeding transformed motor activity into sensory neurons. We utilize our computational full body model to determine the appropriate sensory input for behavior, such as crawling, to persist after explicit external stimulation (touch) has ceased, as observed in experiments [5]. Since such persistence could be explained by a feedback loop between the environment and sensory neurons (Fig. ​(Fig.1C),1C), we propose an adaptive control algorithm that extends existing recursive least squares-based algorithms (e.g. FORCE [6]). Our algorithm finds weights for synaptic input using a low-dimensional projection of motor neuron dynamics, and is capable of finding sensory input patterns that will lead to the desired movement.