Towards an image of a memory trace

• Autor(a) principal: Vicente, MI
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Mainen, ZF
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.7/146

Learning and memory lead to functional and structural changes in the brain, ultimately providing a basis for adaptive behavior. The honeybee is an elegant model for the study of learning and memory formation as it permits both the visualization of neural activity related to the events occurring in olfactory learning and the behavioral assessment of olfactory learning (Galizia and Menzel, 2000 ). The formation of odor memories in the honeybee is thought to involve the two primary processing centers of the olfactory system, the antennal lobe (AL) and the mushroom body (MB). The intrinsic neurons of the MB – the Kenyon cells (KCs), located within the lip region of the MB calyx – are the site of convergence of the neural pathways that transmit odor information from the projection neurons (PNs) of the AL and reward information from the VUMmx1 neuron (Hammer, 1997 ). In recent years, imaging studies performed in the honeybee AL and MB lip have indicated that pairing odor and reward induces changes in neural activity (Faber and Menzel, 2001 ; Faber et al., 1999 ), reinforcing the anatomical suggestion that KCs are likely to undergo associative plasticity during learning.