title: Advances and limitations of visual conditioning protocols in harnessed bees.
abstract: Bees are excellent invertebrate models for studying visual learning and memory mechanisms, because of their sophisticated visual system and impressive cognitive capacities associated with a relatively simple brain. Visual learning in free-flying bees has been traditionally studied using an operant conditioning paradigm. This well-established protocol, however, can hardly be combined with invasive procedures for studying the neurobiological basis of visual learning. Different efforts have been made to develop protocols in which harnessed honey bees could associate visual cues with reinforcement, though learning performances remain poorer than those obtained with free-flying animals. Especially in the last decade, the intention of improving visual learning performances of harnessed bees led many authors to adopt distinct visual conditioning protocols, altering parameters like harnessing method, nature and duration of visual stimulation, number of trials, inter-trial intervals, among others. As a result, the literature provides data hardly comparable and sometimes contradictory. In the present review, we provide an extensive analysis of the literature available on visual conditioning of harnessed bees, with special emphasis on the comparison of diverse conditioning parameters adopted by different authors. Together with this comparative overview, we discuss how these diverse conditioning parameters could modulate visual learning performances of harnessed bees.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative (CBI), Université de Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France. Electronic address: aurore.avargues-weber@univ-tlse3.fr.
authors.forename: Aurore
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Avarguès-Weber
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Fisiologia e Biofísica, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas - ICB, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - UFMG, Av. Antônio Carlos 6627, 31270-901 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Electronic address: theo@icb.ufmg.br.
authors.forename: Theo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mota
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D008568:Memory; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology
keywords: Bees; Classical conditioning; Proboscis extension reflex; Visual learning