A Drosophila model for alcohol reward

By K. Kaun, R. Azanchi, Zaw Maung, Jay Hirsh, Ulrike Heberlein. 2011

225 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The rewarding properties of drugs contribute to the development of abuse and addiction. We developed a new assay for investigating the motivational properties of ethanol in the genetically tractable model Drosophila melanogaster. Flies learned to associate cues with ethanol intoxication and, although transiently aversive, the experience led to a long-lasting attraction for the ethanol-paired cue, implying that intoxication is rewarding. Temporally blocking transmission in dopaminergic neurons revealed that flies require activation of these neurons to express, but not develop, conditioned preference for ethanol-associated cues. Moreover, flies acquired, consolidated and retrieved these rewarding memories using distinct sets of neurons in the mushroom body. Finally, mutations in scabrous, encoding a fibrinogen-related peptide that regulates Notch signaling, disrupted the formation of memories for ethanol reward. Our results thus establish that Drosophila can be useful for understanding the molecular, genetic and neural mechanisms underling the rewarding properties of ethanol.

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

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Citations in the corpus

Dopaminergic neurons write and update memories with cell-type-specific rules (2016, background): “Recent studies (Kaun et al., 2011; Das et al., 2014; Aso et al., 2014b) provide further examples most easily explained by parallel induction of conflicting memories of different decay rates.”
Mushroom body output neurons encode valence and guide memory-based action selection in Drosophila (2014, background): “Blocking KC synaptic output has been shown to interfere with this memory (Kaun et al., 2011), indicating a role for the MB.”
The Drosophila Mushroom Body: From Architecture to Algorithm in a Learning Circuit. (2020, background): “Persistent activity is also the leading hypothesis for LTM consolidation in courtship conditioning, a paradigm where a male fly learns to suppress its courtship display toward a mated female after he experiences rejection (Keleman et al. 2012).”
Two independent mushroom body output circuits retrieve the six discrete components of Drosophila aversive memory. (2015, methodology): “Drosophila, which offer invaluable tools for neural network analysis, are capable of forming many different kinds of memory (Quinn and Dudai, 1976; Tempel et al., 1983; Tully et al., 1994; McBride et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2006; Colomb et al., 2009; Kaun et al., 2011).”
Three Dopamine Pathways Induce Aversive Odor Memories with Different Stability (2012, background): “ory, some of which are mapped in the MB [17,21,24,26,27,28,29].”
Distinct dopamine neurons mediate reward signals for short- and long-term memories (2014, background): “It would be interesting to compare neuronal representations of different rewarding stimuli, such as ethanol (51) and water (41, 52).”
Spaced Training Forms Complementary Long-Term Memories of Opposite Valence in Drosophila (2019, unknown): “A similar time-dependent behavioral transition is evident when flies are trained with alcohol reinforcement (Kaun et al., 2011).”
A connectome of a learning and memory center in the adult Drosophila brain (2017, background): “…plasticity of the KC>MBON synapse is thought to be central to associative learning in this system (Owald et al., 2015; Hige et al., 2015a; Cohn et al., 2015; Bouzaiane et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2007; Schwaerzel et al., 2003; Qin et al., 2012b; Kaun et al., 2011; Rohwedder et al., 2016).”
A Framework for Studying Emotions Across Phylogeny (2014, unknown): “A modification of this test, involving associations with neutral odors, has been used to demonstrate that alcohol has rewarding properties in Drosophila (Kaun et al., 2011).”