Olfactory blocking and odorant similarity in the honeybee

Guerrieri, Fernando J.; Lachnit, Harald; Gerber, Bertram; Giurfa, Martín

doi:10.1101/lm.79305

Cited by 53 publications

(56 citation statements)

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“…Similarity among stimuli was therefore not only dependent on their structure, but also on the animal's training experience. Comparable asymmetric responses had been previously observed in honey bees (Guerrieri et al, 2005a;Guerrieri et al, 2005b;Sandoz et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 50%

Chemical structure of odorants and perceptual similarity in ants

Bos

d’Ettorre

Guerrieri

2013

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYAnimals are often immersed in a chemical world consisting of mixtures of many compounds rather than of single substances, and they constantly face the challenge of extracting relevant information out of the chemical landscape. To this purpose, the ability to discriminate among different stimuli with different valence is essential, but it is also important to be able to generalise, i.e. to treat different but similar stimuli as equivalent, as natural variation does not necessarily affect stimulus valence. Animals can thus extract regularities in their environment and make predictions, for instance about distribution of food resources. We studied perceptual similarity of different plant odours by conditioning individual carpenter ants to one odour, and subsequently testing their response to another, structurally different odour. We found that asymmetry in generalisation, where ants generalise from odour A to B, but not from B to A, is dependent on both chain length and functional group. By conditioning ants to a binary mixture, and testing their reaction to the individual components of the mixture, we show that overshadowing, where parts of a mixture are learned better than others, is rare. Additionally, generalisation is dependent not only on the structural similarity of odorants, but also on their functional value, which might play a crucial role. Our results provide insight into how ants make sense of the complex chemical world around them, for example in a foraging context, and provide a basis with which to investigate the neural mechanisms behind perceptual similarity. Supplementary material available online at

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 50%

Chemical structure of odorants and perceptual similarity in ants

Bos

d’Ettorre

Guerrieri

2013

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…While blocking was reported in some cases (Smith and Cobey 1994;Smith 1997;Hosler and Smith 2000), its existence could not be confirmed in other cases (Gerber and Ullrich 1999). Confounding factors like a lack of balance between groups or an insufficient number of odorants and bees tested per group led Guerrieri and coworkers (Guerrieri et al 2005a) to readdress the question of blocking in the olfactory domain in honeybees. They assayed all 24 possible combinations of the four odors chosen for their experiments, which stand for A, B, and N, in a balanced design involving 1000 bees.…”

Section: Psychological Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Invertebrate learning and memory: Fifty years of olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension response in honeybees

Giurfa

Sandoz²

2012

Learn. Mem.

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353

334

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The honeybee Apis mellifera has emerged as a robust and influential model for the study of classical conditioning, thanks to the existence of a powerful Pavlovian conditioning protocol, the olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension response (PER). In 2011, the olfactory PER conditioning protocol celebrates 50 years since it was first introduced by Kimihisa Takeda in 1961. Here, we review its origins, developments, and perspectives in order to define future research avenues and necessary methodological and conceptual evolutions. We show that olfactory PER conditioning has become a versatile tool for the study of questions in extremely diverse fields in addition to the study of learning and memory and that it has allowed behavioral characterizations, not only of honeybees, but also of other insect species, for which the protocol was adapted. We celebrate, therefore, Takeda's original work and prompt colleagues to conceive and establish further robust behavioral tools for an accurate characterization of insect learning and memory at multiple levels of analysis.Classical conditioning (Pavlov 1927) is a form of conditioning in which a subject learns to associate a neutral stimulus (the "conditioned stimulus," or CS), which does not originally elicit a behavioral response, with a stimulus of biological significance (the "unconditioned stimulus," or US), which elicits an innate, often reflexive, response. Through this association, the originally neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to elicit a conditioned response.Decades of research on animal learning and memory have established some invertebrates (e.g., the sea hare, Aplysia californica, the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, the honeybee, Apis mellifera) as standard models for the study of classical conditioning (Giurfa 2007b;Menzel et al. 2007). This success can be attributed to the fact that these animals can learn nonassociative as well as Pavlovian and operant associations and possess relatively simple nervous systems that allow retracing of these phenomena to the cellular and molecular levels in different kinds of laboratory preparations. Among these invertebrates, the honeybee, Apis mellifera, has emerged as a robust and influential model for the study of

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“…To compare the perceived odor similarities in trace and delay memories, we used generalization learning (Guerrieri et al, 2005;Mishra et al, 2010). Flies were trained with two trials of either delay (ISI ϭ 5 s) or trace (ISI ϭ 15 s) conditioning with 1-butanol.…”

Section: Odor Similarity In Delay and Trace Conditioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Olfactory Trace Conditioning inDrosophila

et al. 2011

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The neural representation of a sensory stimulus evolves with time, and animals keep that representation even after stimulus cessation (i.e., a stimulus "trace"). To contrast the memories of an odor and an odor trace, we here establish a rigorous trace conditioning paradigm in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. We modify the olfactory associative learning paradigm, in which the odor and electric shock are presented with a temporal overlap (delay conditioning). Given a few-second temporal gap between the presentations of the odor and the shock in trace conditioning, the odor trace must be kept until the arrival of electric shock to form associative memory. We found that memories after trace and delay conditioning have striking similarities: both reached the same asymptotic learning level, although at different rates, and both kinds of memory have similar decay kinetics and highly correlated generalization profiles across odors. In search of the physiological correlate of the odor trace, we used in vivo calcium imaging to characterize the odor-evoked activity of the olfactory receptor neurons in the antennal lobe. After the offset of odor presentation, the receptor neurons showed persistent, odor-specific response patterns that lasted for a few seconds and were fundamentally different from the response patterns during the stimulation. Weak correlation between the behavioral odor generalization profile in trace conditioning and the physiological odor similarity profiles in the antennal lobe suggest that the odor trace used for associative learning may be encoded downstream of the olfactory receptor neurons.

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Olfactory blocking and odorant similarity in the honeybee

Cited by 53 publications

References 50 publications

Chemical structure of odorants and perceptual similarity in ants

Chemical structure of odorants and perceptual similarity in ants

Invertebrate learning and memory: Fifty years of olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension response in honeybees

Olfactory Trace Conditioning inDrosophila

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