Cellular analysis of appetitive learning in invertebrates.
In recent years significant progress has been made in the analysis of the cellular mechanisms underlying appetitive learning in two invertebrate species, the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis and the honeybee Apis mellifera. In Lymnaea, both chemical (taste) and tactile appetitive conditioning paradigms were used and cellular traces of behavioural classical conditioning were recorded at several specific sites in the nervous system. These sites included sensory pathways, central pattern generator and modulatory interneurones as well as motoneurones of the feeding network. In the honeybee, a chemical (odour) appetitive conditioning paradigm resulted in cellular changes at different sites in the nervous system. In both the pond snail and the honeybee the activation of identified modulatory interneurones could substitute for the use of the chemical unconditioned stimulus, making these paradigms even more amenable to more detailed cellular and molecular analysis.
Kemenes
G
G
Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, United Kingdom. gkemenes@sussex.ac.uk
D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D007858:Learning; D008195:Lymnaea / Q000502:physiology*