Neuronal mechanisms that induce memories in the fly brain Center for Developmental Biology

Home > Seminars and Events > Neuronal mechanisms that induce memories in the fly brain

Category	Seminar
Date and Time	2011-12-12 16:00 - 17:00
Venue	Seminar Room A7F
Speaker	Hiromu Tanimoto
Affiliation	Max-Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried Germany
Title	Neuronal mechanisms that induce memories in the fly brain
Poster	click here to download(PDF)
Host	Erina Kuranaga
Abstract	Animals can adapt their behaviour to given environment according to memories of their former experiences. To address neural circuits underlying adaptive behaviour, we chose associative memory of Drosophila melanogaster as a model system. Flies form positive or negative memories of an odour by paired presentation of sugar reward or electric shock punishment. Over the past years, we have worked on the neuronal mechanisms for endowing positive or negative values with the odour and found the important roles of neuromodulator dopamine. The value signals by dopamine converge with the odour signal in the mushroom body that consists of second-order olfactory interneurons, thereby the fly forms associative memories. Since dopamine is synthesized in ~280 neurons in the fly brain and involved also in other brain functions, it is important to identify individual responsible neurons for value signalling. I will summarize our most recent findings particularly how we identified different types of dopamine neurons for signalling positive and negative values and discuss about the subcellular modulation of synapses at the formation of odour memories.