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The Neural Signature of Visual Learning Under Restrictive Virtual-Reality Conditions

Summary

Scientists studied how honey bees learn to distinguish different colors in a virtual reality environment. By examining the brains of bees that successfully learned versus those that didn’t, researchers found that successful learning caused specific genes to be turned down in key visual brain regions. This suggests that learning involves not just turning genes on, but also turning some off, which may help the brain focus on important visual information. The findings help us understand how animal brains process visual information and learn from experience.

Background

Honey bees are known for their remarkable visual learning and navigation capabilities. Virtual reality environments have been developed to study these visual learning performances in tethered animals under controlled sensory conditions. This study investigates whether visual learning induces changes in immediate early gene expression in the bee brain under restrictive 2D virtual reality conditions.

Objective

This study aims to determine if color discrimination learning in a 2D virtual reality environment induces changes in immediate early gene expression and to map the neural signature of visual learning in the bee brain. The researchers compared immediate early gene expression between bees that successfully learned to discriminate colors and those that did not.

Results

Bees successfully learned to discriminate the colored stimuli, with 23 learners showing correct choices of the rewarded stimulus. Significant differences in immediate early gene expression were found between learners and non-learners: Egr1 was downregulated in the optic lobes, while Hr38 and kakusei were coincidently downregulated in the mushroom body calyces of learners. These downregulations suggest an inhibitory neural trace associated with successful learning.

Conclusion

Visual learning under restrictive 2D virtual reality conditions induces a distributed neural signature characterized by downregulation of immediate early genes in the optic lobes and mushroom body calyces. This inhibitory trace differs from the upregulation observed in more permissive 3D virtual reality environments, suggesting that different motor patterns and learning mechanisms are engaged under different VR conditions. The findings highlight the importance of mushroom bodies for visual learning and memory in bees.
  • Published in:Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience,
  • Study Type:Experimental Study,
  • Source: PMID: 35250505
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