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Functional architecture of reward learning in mushroom body extrinsic neurons of larval Drosophila.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Saumweber, Timo 
Rohwedder, Astrid 
Chen, Yi-Chun 

Abstract

The brain adaptively integrates present sensory input, past experience, and options for future action. The insect mushroom body exemplifies how a central brain structure brings about such integration. Here we use a combination of systematic single-cell labeling, connectomics, transgenic silencing, and activation experiments to study the mushroom body at single-cell resolution, focusing on the behavioral architecture of its input and output neurons (MBINs and MBONs), and of the mushroom body intrinsic APL neuron. Our results reveal the identity and morphology of almost all of these 44 neurons in stage 3 Drosophila larvae. Upon an initial screen, functional analyses focusing on the mushroom body medial lobe uncover sparse and specific functions of its dopaminergic MBINs, its MBONs, and of the GABAergic APL neuron across three behavioral tasks, namely odor preference, taste preference, and associative learning between odor and taste. Our results thus provide a cellular-resolution study case of how brains organize behavior.

Description

Keywords

Animals, Behavior, Animal, Drosophila, Female, Larva, Learning, Male, Mushroom Bodies, Neurons, Reward, Smell, Taste

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

9

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC