Research progress on Drosophila visual cognition in China

Guo, Aike; Zhang, Ke; Peng, YueQin; Wang, Xi

doi:10.1007/s11427-010-0073-9

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 102 publications

(131 reference statements)

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“…Spatial attention, however, was investigated predominantly in Drosophila (Greenspan and van Swinderen, 2004;Guo et al, 2010). It is defined as a process that dynamically highlights one location of the visual field over others (Maimon, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual attention in a complex search task differs between honeybees and bumblebees

Morawetz

Spaethe

2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYMechanisms of spatial attention are used when the amount of gathered information exceeds processing capacity. Such mechanisms have been proposed in bees, but have not yet been experimentally demonstrated. We provide evidence that selective attention influences the foraging performance of two social bee species, the honeybee Apis mellifera and the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. Visual search tasks, originally developed for application in human psychology, were adapted for behavioural experiments on bees. We examined the impact of distracting visual information on search performance, which we measured as error rate and decision time. We found that bumblebees were significantly less affected by distracting objects than honeybees. Based on the results, we conclude that the search mechanism in honeybees is serial like, whereas in bumblebees it shows the characteristics of a restricted parallel-like search. Furthermore, the bees differed in their strategy to solve the speed-accuracy trade-off. Whereas bumblebees displayed slow but correct decision-making, honeybees exhibited fast and inaccurate decisionmaking. We propose two neuronal mechanisms of visual information processing that account for the different responses between honeybees and bumblebees, and we correlate species-specific features of the search behaviour to differences in habitat and life history. Supplementary material available online at

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual attention in a complex search task differs between honeybees and bumblebees

Morawetz

Spaethe

2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…Take the advantage of Drosophila, a classical simple animal model which shares certain features of visual cognition in common with mammals at the genetic, molecular, cellular, and even higher behavioral levels, Guo and colleagues have got a series of important findings on the cognitive behaviors as well as learning and memory [37]. They gave the first report about the interaction between 'what' and 'where' pathways in Drosophila.…”

Section: The Mechanism Of Sensory System and Cognitive Behaviorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A brief review on current progress in neuroscience in China

Qiang

Liu

2011

Sci. China Life Sci.

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Neuroscience has been undergoing a rapid development in China since the beginning of the 21st century. Chinese scientists are working on neuroscience and getting more and more important results. As described by Poo Mu-ming [1], the increasing funding support, the flood of returning overseas researchers and numerous international conferences held in China give birth to the springtime of neuroscience in China. The development of nervous system and neural cellsThe nervous system is a complex network of axonal projections and synaptic connections [2]. At the early stage of neural development, besides generation of neurons and glial cells, synapse formation is the foundation of neuronal circuits and the basis of functions of nervous system including learning and memory.Chinese neuroscientists have paid attention to neural development, especially to the cellular and molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and neuronal plasticity [3]. Some of these studies highlight the research of synaptic plasticity, including elucidating the mechanism of actin polymerization-dependent maturation/regulation of presynaptic transmitter secretion, which appears significant for activity-dependent synaptogenesis and the plasticity of the synaptic network during development [4], indicating the role of hippocampal synaptic plasticity as a key factor in the effects of stress or glucocorticoids on opiate addiction [5].Meanwhile, a lot of work on LTP/LTD regarded as a cellular basis for learning and memory was introduced [6]. According to Poo and colleagues, late-LTP which requires NMDA receptor activation is linked to long-term memory formation in vivo [7]. To elucidate the progress in synapse formation, the research of neuromuscular junction to excitatory central nervous system (CNS) synapses has been carried out, in addition with the mechanism exploration of activation of silent synapse in early development and investigation of synapse protein structure [8]. The role of transient receptor potential canonical (TRPC) channels in nervous system was investigated by Wang and colleagues. They found that TRPC channels mediate the role of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in promoting neuronal survival [9] and TRPC6 is involved in synaptic and behavioral plasticity [10].In axon guidance and neuronal migration research [11], a hypothesis of chemotropic guidance of cortical radial migration [12] was supported by that semaphorin-3A is required as a chemoattractant for radial migration [13]. Calcium has been shown to play several roles in neuronal migration by mediating repulsive guidance, coordinating the changes in motility of growth cone and soma [14,15]. Meanwhile, Chung and Yuan reported that other molecules such as proteoglycans and rho GTPase are vital in mediating axon guidance and neuronal migration [16,17]. Study on ion channels and neurotransmittersIon channels could mediate rapid changes in membrane potential of synaptic transmission and be essential for a variety

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“…Since the well-known genetic background and measurable cognitive behaviors, Drosophila has been widely used as an animal model for research in visual cognition and information processing in the perspective of genes-brain-behavior [59,60]. To understand the regulatory mechanisms of dendritic development, retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) of mice have been used [61].…”

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confidence: 99%

Neuroscience in China 2010–2011

Zhu

2012

Chin. Sci. Bull.

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Research progress on Drosophila visual cognition in China

Cited by 8 publications

References 102 publications

Visual attention in a complex search task differs between honeybees and bumblebees

Visual attention in a complex search task differs between honeybees and bumblebees

A brief review on current progress in neuroscience in China

Neuroscience in China 2010–2011

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