Dataset Information

Neural correlates of side-specific odour memory in mushroom body output neurons.

ABSTRACT: Humans and other mammals as well as honeybees learn a unilateral association between an olfactory stimulus presented to one side and a reward. In all of them, the learned association can be behaviourally retrieved via contralateral stimulation, suggesting inter-hemispheric communication. However, the underlying neuronal circuits are largely unknown and neural correlates of across-brain-side plasticity have yet not been demonstrated. We report neural plasticity that reflects lateral integration after side-specific odour reward conditioning. Mushroom body output neurons that did not respond initially to contralateral olfactory stimulation developed a unique and stable representation of the rewarded compound stimulus (side and odour) predicting its value during memory retention. The encoding of the reward-associated compound stimulus is delayed by about 40 ms compared with unrewarded neural activity, indicating an increased computation time for the read-out after lateral integration.

SUBMITTER: Strube-Bloss MF

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5204139 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Neural correlates of side-specific odour memory in mushroom body output neurons.

Strube-Bloss Martin F MF Nawrot Martin P MP Menzel Randolf R

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20161201 1844

Humans and other mammals as well as honeybees learn a unilateral association between an olfactory stimulus presented to one side and a reward. In all of them, the learned association can be behaviourally retrieved via contralateral stimulation, suggesting inter-hemispheric communication. However, the underlying neuronal circuits are largely unknown and neural correlates of across-brain-side plasticity have yet not been demonstrated. We report neural plasticity that reflects lateral integration a ...[more]

PMID: 27974514

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Project description:Multisensory integration plays a central role in perception, as all behaviors usually require the input of different sensory signals. For instance, for a foraging honeybee the association of a food source includes the combination of olfactory and visual cues to be categorized as a flower. Moreover, homing after successful foraging using celestial cues and the panoramic scenery may be dominated by visual cues. Hence, dependent on the context, one modality might be leading and influence the processing of other modalities. To unravel the complex neural mechanisms behind this process we studied honeybee mushroom body output neurons (MBON). MBONs represent the first processing level after olfactory-visual convergence in the honeybee brain. This was physiologically confirmed in our previous study by characterizing a subpopulation of multisensory MBONs. These neurons categorize incoming sensory inputs into olfactory, visual, and olfactory-visual information. However, in addition to multisensory units a prominent population of MBONs was sensitive to visual cues only. Therefore, we asked which visual features might be represented at this high-order integration level. Using extracellular, multi-unit recordings in combination with visual and olfactory stimulation, we separated MBONs with multisensory responses from purely visually driven MBONs. Further analysis revealed, for the first time, that visually driven MBONs of both groups encode detailed aspects within this individual modality, such as light intensity and light identity. Moreover, we show that these features are separated by different MBON subpopulations, for example by extracting information about brightness and wavelength. Most interestingly, the latter MBON population was tuned to separate UV-light from other light stimuli, which were only poorly differentiated from each other. A third MBON subpopulation was neither tuned to brightness nor to wavelength and encoded the general presence of light. Taken together, our results support the view that the mushroom body, a high-order sensory integration, learning and memory center in the insect brain, categorizes sensory information by separating different behaviorally relevant aspects of the multisensory scenery and that these categories are channeled into distinct MBON subpopulations.

Dataset Information

Neural correlates of side-specific odour memory in mushroom body output neurons.

Publications

Neural correlates of side-specific odour memory in mushroom body output neurons.

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