Dopamine modulates appetitive memory in two arthropods

KLAPPEBACH MARTIN; FERNANDO LOCATELLI

Santiago de Chile

Workshop; Small Brains, Big Ideas; 2012

Faculty of Medicine - Universidad de Chile

Robust learning paradigms and relatively simple nervous systems with access for diverse experimental techniques convert invertebrates into powerful models for studying the cellular basis of learning and memory. Pathways that encode the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli and the brain areas of sensory integration have been mapped in Drosophila and honey bees. It has been demonstrated that two monoamines, dopamine and octopamine mediate aversive and appetitive reinforcements respectively. Even though it was initially understood that DA exclusively mediates aversive learning and octopamine is the counterpart for appetitive learning, more recent works indicate that both amines may interact during learning. Here we present our results in two arthropods, crabs and honey bees, which suggest that dopamine negatively modulates appetitive long-term memory formation.