| Autor: |
Lüdke A; Department of Biology, Neurobiology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany., Raiser G; Department of Biology, Neurobiology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.; International Max Planck Research School for Organismal Biology, Konstanz, Germany., Nehrkorn J; Fakultät für Biologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Martinsried, Germany.; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Munich, Germany., Herz AVM; Fakultät für Biologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Martinsried, Germany.; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Munich, Germany., Galizia CG; Department of Biology, Neurobiology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany., Szyszka P; Department of Biology, Neurobiology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany. |
| Abstrakt: |
Animals can form associations between temporally separated stimuli. To do so, the nervous system has to retain a neural representation of the first stimulus until the second stimulus appears. The neural substrate of such sensory stimulus memories is unknown. Here, we search for a sensory odor memory in the insect olfactory system and characterize odorant-evoked Ca 2+ activity at three consecutive layers of the olfactory system in Drosophila : in olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) and projection neurons (PNs) in the antennal lobe, and in Kenyon cells (KCs) in the mushroom body. We show that the post-stimulus responses in ORN axons, PN dendrites, PN somata, and KC dendrites are odor-specific, but they are not predictive of the chemical identity of past olfactory stimuli. However, the post-stimulus responses in KC somata carry information about the identity of previous olfactory stimuli. These findings show that the Ca 2+ dynamics in KC somata could encode a sensory memory of odorant identity and thus might serve as a basis for associations between temporally separated stimuli. |
