The Long-Term Memory Trace Formed in the Drosophilaα/β Mushroom Body Neurons is abolished in Long-Term Memory Mutants

By D. Akalal, Dinghui Yu, Ronald L. Davis. 2011

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A prior screen identified dozens of Drosophila melanogaster mutants that possess defective long-term memory (LTM). Using spaced olfactory conditioning, we trained 26 of these mutant lines to associate an odor cue with electric shock and then examined the memory of this conditioning 24 h later. All of the mutants tested revealed a deficit in LTM compared to the robust LTM observed in control flies. We used in vivo functional optical imaging to measure the magnitude of a previously characterized LTM trace, which is manifested as increased calcium influx into the axons of α/β mushroom body neurons in response to the conditioned odor. This memory trace was defective in all 26 of the LTM mutants. These observations elevate the significance of this LTM trace given that 26 independent mutants all exhibit a defect in the trace, and further suggest that the calcium trace is a fundamental mechanism underlying Drosophila LTM.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Genetics, Insect Science

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Citations in the corpus

Mushroom body output neurons encode valence and guide memory-based action selection in Drosophila (2014, background): “…from those responsible for memories with shorter retention times (Yin et al., 1994; Pascual and Preat, 2001; Dubnau et al., 2003; Comas et al., 2004; Isabel et al., 2004; Yu et al., 2006; Blum et al., 2009; Akalal et al., 2010, 2011; Trannoy et al., 2011; Huang et al., 2012; Placais et al., 2012).”
A connectome of a learning and memory center in the adult Drosophila brain (2017, methodology): “We have densely reconstructed the connectome of the a lobe of the adult Drosophila MB, a region essential for long-term associative memory (Pascual and Préat, 2001; Pai et al., 2013; Yu et al., 2006; Séjourné et al., 2011; Akalal et al., 2011; Blum et al., 2009; Trannoy et al., 2011).”
Imaging a Population Code for Odor Identity in the Drosophila Mushroom Body (2013, methodology): “This approach has been used previously in studies of long-term memory (Yu et al., 2006; Akalal et al., 2010, 2011).”
System-like consolidation of olfactory memories in Drosophila (2013, background): “This enhancement persists through 24 h and requires normal protein synthesis, spaced conditioning, the activity of the transcription factor Creb, and the normal function of 26 different LTM genes (Yu et al., 2006; Akalal et al., 2011).”
Heterosynaptic plasticity underlies aversive olfactory learning in Drosophila (2015, unknown): “While odor-evoked calcium signals increase in KC axons (Akalal et al., 2010, 2011; Boto et al., 2014; Tomchik and Davis, 2009; Wang et al., 2008; Yu et al., 2006, but see Zhang and Roman, 2013), signals in MBONs decrease in some cases (Owald et al., 2015; Séjourné et al., 2011) and increase in…”