TY - JOUR
T1 - Place learning overrides innate behaviors in Drosophila
AU - Baggett, Vincent
AU - Mishra, Aditi
AU - Kehrer, Abigail L.
AU - Robinson, Abbey O.
AU - Shaw, Paul
AU - Zars, Troy
N1 - Funding Information:
Research in the laboratory of T.Z. is supported by NIH grant NS076980 and NSF grants 1535790 and 1654866. Helpful comments and discussion with Martin Heisenberg, Reinhard Wolf, and Bertram Gerber are gratefully acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Baggett et al.
PY - 2018/3
Y1 - 2018/3
N2 - Animals in a natural environment confront many sensory cues. Some of these cues bias behavioral decisions independent of experience, and action selection can reveal a stimulus-response (S-R) connection. However, in a changing environment it would be a benefit for an animal to update behavioral action selection based on experience, and learning might modify even strong S-R relationships. How animals use learning to modify S-R relationships is a largely open question. Three sensory stimuli, air, light, and gravity sources were presented to individual Drosophila melanogaster in both naïe and place conditioning situations. Flies were tested for a potential modification of the S-R relationships of anemotaxis, phototaxis, and negative gravitaxis by a contingency that associated place with high temperature. With two stimuli, significant S-R relationships were abandoned when the cue was in conflict with the place learning contingency. The role of the dunce (dnc) cAMP-phosphodiesterase and the rutabaga (rut) adenylyl cyclase were examined in all conditions. Both dnc1 and rut2080 mutant flies failed to display significant S-R relationships with two attractive cues, and have characteristically lower conditioning scores under most conditions. Thus, learning can have profound effects on separate native S-R relationships in multiple contexts, and mutation of the dnc and rut genes reveal complex effects on behavior.
AB - Animals in a natural environment confront many sensory cues. Some of these cues bias behavioral decisions independent of experience, and action selection can reveal a stimulus-response (S-R) connection. However, in a changing environment it would be a benefit for an animal to update behavioral action selection based on experience, and learning might modify even strong S-R relationships. How animals use learning to modify S-R relationships is a largely open question. Three sensory stimuli, air, light, and gravity sources were presented to individual Drosophila melanogaster in both naïe and place conditioning situations. Flies were tested for a potential modification of the S-R relationships of anemotaxis, phototaxis, and negative gravitaxis by a contingency that associated place with high temperature. With two stimuli, significant S-R relationships were abandoned when the cue was in conflict with the place learning contingency. The role of the dunce (dnc) cAMP-phosphodiesterase and the rutabaga (rut) adenylyl cyclase were examined in all conditions. Both dnc1 and rut2080 mutant flies failed to display significant S-R relationships with two attractive cues, and have characteristically lower conditioning scores under most conditions. Thus, learning can have profound effects on separate native S-R relationships in multiple contexts, and mutation of the dnc and rut genes reveal complex effects on behavior.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044215560&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1101/lm.046136.117
DO - 10.1101/lm.046136.117
M3 - Article
C2 - 29449456
AN - SCOPUS:85044215560
SN - 1072-0502
VL - 25
SP - 122
EP - 128
JO - Learning and Memory
JF - Learning and Memory
IS - 3
ER -