Morphology and function of the hemiellipsoid bodies of the crab Neohelice granulata; their role as high-order memory centers

MAZA FRANCISCO; SZTARKER JULIETA; FERNANDO LOCATELLI; DELORENZI ALEJANDRO

Brisbane

Congreso; ICN 2018; 2018

International Society for Neuroethology

Morphology and function of the hemiellipsoidbodies of the crab Neohelice granulata;their role as high-order memory centers F.J. Maza, J. Sztarker, F. Locatelli, A.DelorenziLaboratorio de Neurobiología de la Memoria, Departamento de Fisiología yBiología Molecular y Celular, IFIByNE-CONICET, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas yNaturales, Universidad de Buenos Despite uniqueadaptations that animals have in accordance to their lifestyle and the conditionsof the environment in which they live, many of the basic mechanisms that allowthem to learn and store acquired information to modify their behavior are conservedacross evolution. In this regard, the molecular machinery involved in neuralplasticity and the dynamics of the memory processes are common throughoutvertebrate and invertebrate species. Theoretically,this occurs because the circuitry and brain organization of the ancestral bilateralanimal has already provided an effective solution that allows the acquisition ofdifferent kinds of information and the organization of  memories as internal representations. One of theiconic neural structures that bear this role in vertebrates is the hippocampus,also referred to as archicortex since it is phylogenetically considered to bethe oldest brain region. In invertebrates, the corpora pedunculata or mushroombodies are supposed to play a similar role as the archicortex of vertebrates. Here, wepresent new neuroanatomical and immunohistochemical data of the hemiellipsoidbodies of the crab Neohelice granulata. Thisstructure has been historically proposed to have a similar function to that ofthe mushroom bodies of insect. N.granulata shows hemiellipsoid bodies that are similar to those described inother true crabs, and its structure resembles that of calyx-less corporapedunculata that are observed in several insect species. In addition, we showresults in which we found, by in vivocalcium imaging, neural changes that reflect context-dependent memoryprocesses.