Recently a study from Ryszard Maleszka’s Lab demonstrates that DNA methylation does play a role in the acquisition of memory and mediates the resistance of this memory to extinction in honeybees (Lockett et al 2010). Now the group of Paul Szyszka in Konstanz provides additional information about the role of DNA methylation in the formation […]
Archiv der Kategorie 'Learning & Memory'
Coffee and Honey bees- Consumption of an acute dose of caffeine reduces acquisition but not memory
Not only because I am working with honey bees but because I myself consume an ‘acute’ dose of caffeine every day, I was particularly interested in this new article published in Behavioural brain research this spring having a look on the impact caffeine consumption has on learning and memory in Honey bees. The experiments follow […]
No need for cognitive maps in insects?
In many animals the ability to navigate over long distances is an important prerequisite for foraging, including ants and bees. The use of path integration(PI) is widely accepted, however the questions of to what extent the path integration can help navigation and if a higher form of inner global representation called “cognitive map” is really existing […]
The generation of a memory trace?
Have you seen the movie Inception? If not you should. It is all about a group of people high jacking the dreams of company bosses to steal useful information from their memory to sell them to their rivals. Anyway the Holy Grail of these “being in other peoples head and manipulating things” – trips is […]
Coincident firing of neurons can specify a synapse for later modulation
Yet another fascinating Nature article from the research group around Gilles Laurent. This article is built around the mechanisms underlying associative learning and plasticity in the mushroom bodies in insects. The area is known to be crucial for associative learning of odors and contains up to hundreds of thousands of neurons called Kenyon cells. Here […]
Specific erasure of fear memory by disrupting reconsolidation
Merel Kindt and her team demonstrated that fear memory can be deleted in humans (Kindt et al. 2009). This was achieved by the oral administration of β-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol before the reactivation of memory. They propose that their strategy of disrupting the (re-) stabilization of a memory after retrieval (reconsolidation) could pave the way […]
The Role of experience in flight behaviour of Drosophila
This study illustrates the requirement of training and exercise in executing successful fine motor skills in the invertebrates.Fruit fly Drosophila groups reared and grown in two different fly chambers ,one allows free flight movement and other restricted flight movement were tested for various flight kinematics in free flight arena and tethered flight simulator.Overall performance of […]
Identification of a genetic cluster influencing memory performance and hippocampal activity in humans
In this study the authors investigated molecular pathways associated with memory formation. They used the behavioral genetics approach to identify genetic variations related to memory performance. An additional fMRI-study was conducted to validate their genetic findings as well as to capture brain activity related to the genotype. Out of 336 healthy subjects that underwent an […]
Operant and classical conditioning in the same neuron
The marine snail Aplysia is perhaps best known for its Nobel-award-winning learning ability. In the classic work, a small water jet to the body of the animal was paired with electric shock to accomplish classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning. Since about the 1930s, it has been a longstanding debate among psychologists whether classical and operant conditioning […]
serotonin necessary for ARM memory phase
In a not so recent paper (January 2011), a nice report by Ann-Shyn Chiang group was published in PNAS. Authors use both pharmacology and genetic trick to show that serotonin is involved in an aversive olfactory memory phase called ARM. Serotonin seems released by the DPM neuron (together with the amnesiac neuropeptide?), and the information […]
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