Cognitive limits of larval Drosophila: testing for conditioned inhibition, sensory preconditioning, and second-order conditioning.

ABSTRACT: Drosophila larvae are an established model system for studying the mechanisms of innate and simple forms of learned behavior. They have about 10 times fewer neurons than adult flies, and it was the low total number of their neurons that allowed for an electron microscopic reconstruction of their brain at synaptic resolution. Regarding the mushroom body, a central brain structure for many forms of associative learning in insects, it turned out that more than half of the classes of synaptic connection had previously escaped attention. Understanding the function of these circuit motifs, subsequently confirmed in adult flies, is an important current research topic. In this context, we test larval Drosophila for their cognitive abilities in three tasks that are characteristically

SUBMITTER: Sen E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11199949 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature