Memory Elicited by Courtship Conditioning Requires Mushroom Body Neuronal Subsets Similar to Those Utilized in Appetitive Memory.

ABSTRACT: An animal's ability to learn and to form memories is essential for its survival. The fruit fly has proven to be a valuable model system for studies of learning and memory. One learned behavior in fruit flies is courtship conditioning. In Drosophila courtship conditioning, male flies learn not to court females during training with an unreceptive female. He retains a memory of this training and for several hours decreases courtship when subsequently paired with any female. Courtship conditioning is a unique learning paradigm; it uses a positive-valence stimulus, a female fly, to teach a male to decrease an innate behavior, courtship of the female. As such, courtship conditioning is not clearly categorized as either appetitive or aversive conditioning. The mushroom body (MB) region in the fru

SUBMITTER: Montague SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5072562 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature