title: The aversive phototaxic suppression assay for individual adult Drosophila.
abstract: Vision is a major sensory modality in Drosophila behavior, with more than one-half of the Drosophila brain devoted to visual processing. The mechanisms of vision in Drosophila can now be studied in individuals and in populations of flies by using various paradigms. Simple strategies for conducting visual perception and learning studies consist of individual studies performed on single flies on solid supports (larvae on agar or adults in a T-maze) using a light/dark association paradigm. These approaches are quite easy to implement but are fairly limited in their ability to address questions of visual perception. Nevertheless, the simpler approaches treating vision in one dimension (light, dark) do provide effective paradigms for genetic analysis. For adult flies, a paradigm called aversive phototaxic suppression (APS), as described here, can be used. This method exploits flies' phototaxic reflex. By associating a lit chamber with quinine (which is aversive), repeated trials on a single animal result in a learned response to avoid (or to suppress) phototaxis. Of note, the unconditioned stimulus (US) quinine must be present throughout the experiment for APS to work, unlike other memory assays in which the US is removed during testing.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: van Swinderen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003624:Darkness; D004330:Drosophila / Q000502:physiology*; D008027:Light