title: Parallel processing of appetitive short- and long-term memories in Drosophila.
abstract: It is broadly accepted that long-term memory (LTM) is formed sequentially after learning and short-term memory (STM) formation, but the nature of the relationship between early and late memory traces remains heavily debated [1-5]. To shed light on this issue, we used an olfactory appetitive conditioning in Drosophila, wherein starved flies learned to associate an odor with the presence of sugar [6]. We took advantage of the fact that both STM and LTM are generated after a unique conditioning cycle [7, 8] to demonstrate that appetitive LTM is able to form independently of STM. More specifically, we show that (1) STM retrieval involves output from γ neurons of the mushroom body (MB), i.e., the olfactory memory center [9, 10], whereas LTM retrieval involves output from αβ MB neurons; (2) STM information is not transferred from γ neurons to αβ neurons for LTM formation; and (3) the adenylyl cyclase RUT, which is thought to operate as a coincidence detector between the olfactory stimulus and the sugar stimulus [11-14], is required independently in γ neurons to form appetitive STM and in αβ neurons to form LTM. Taken together, these results demonstrate that appetitive short- and long-term memories are formed and processed in parallel.
authors.affiliation: Genes and Dynamics of Memory Systems Group, Neurobiology Unit, CNRS, ESPCI, 10 Rue Vauquelin, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Séverine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Trannoy
authors.forename: Christelle
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Redt-Clouet
authors.forename: Jean-Maurice
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Dura
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Preat
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D057567:Memory, Long-Term; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D024521:Mushroom Bodies / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D009812:Odorants; D012903:Smell; D013395:Sucrose / Q000494:pharmacology
chemical_list: D013395:Sucrose