Dopaminergic neurons encode a distributed, asymmetric representation of temperature in Drosophila

By Seth M. Tomchik. 2013

45 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Dopaminergic circuits modulate a wide variety of innate and learned behaviors in animals, including olfactory associative learning, arousal, and temperature-preference behavior. It is not known whether distinct or overlapping sets of dopaminergic neurons modulate these behaviors. Here, I have functionally characterized the dopaminergic circuits innervating the Drosophila mushroom body with in vivo calcium imaging and conditional silencing of genetically defined subsets of neurons. Distinct subsets of PPL1 dopaminergic neurons innervating the vertical lobes of the mushroom body responded to decreases in temperature, but not increases, with rapidly adapting bursts of activity. PAM neurons innervating the horizontal lobes did not respond to temperature shifts. Ablation of the antennae and maxillary palps reduced, but did not eliminate, the responses. Genetic silencing of dopaminergic neurons innervating the vertical mushroom body lobes substantially reduced behavioral cold avoidance, but silencing smaller subsets of these neurons had no effect. These data demonstrate that overlapping dopaminergic circuits encode a broadly distributed, asymmetric representation of temperature that overlays regions implicated previously in learning, memory, and forgetting. Thus, diverse behaviors engage overlapping sets of dopaminergic neurons that encode multimodal stimuli and innervate a single anatomical target, the mushroom body.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics

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Citations in the corpus

Dopaminergic neurons write and update memories with cell-type-specific rules (2016, background): “Punitive or rewarding stimuli such as electric shock, heat, cold, bitter taste and sugar generally activate a complex pattern of DANs (Riemensperger et al., 2005; Mao and Davis, 2009; ; Liu et al., 2012; Tomchik, 2013; Galili et al., 2014; Das et al., 2014; Kirkhart and Scott, 2015).”
Sleep facilitates memory by blocking dopamine neuron mediated forgetting (2015, unknown): “In fact, these neurons have already been shown to respond to many salient stimuli, including odors and electric shock (Mao and Davis, 2009) and temperature changes (Tomchik, 2013).”
Gustatory Learning and Processing in the Drosophila Mushroom Bodies (2015, background): “Previous studies of PPL1 neurons showed that they are necessary for shock-induced olfactory aversive conditioning and that they respond to temperature decreases (Tomchik, 2013) and the chemical repellent DEET (Das et al., 2014), suggesting that PPL1 encodes multiple types of aversive US.”
Converging circuits mediate temperature and shock aversive olfactory conditioning in Drosophila. (2014, unknown): “Increased temperature stimulation was applied by switching the temperature of the perfused saline solution (Figure 4A) [23].”
A Higher Brain Circuit for Immediate Integration of Conflicting Sensory Information in Drosophila. (2015, background): “Different temperatures could activate distinct sets of dopaminergic neurons, which in turn lead to preference or avoidance of a particular temperature in a gradient [36, 37].”