Visual working memory in decision making by honey bees

Abstract

The robustness and plasticity of working memory were investigated in honey bees by using a delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) paradigm. The findings are summarized as follows: first, performance in the DMTS task decreases as the duration between the presentation of the sample stimulus and the presentation of the comparison stimuli is increased. This decrease is well approximated by an exponential decay function. Performance is significantly better than random-choice level even at delays as long as 5 sec and is reduced to random-choice levels at an average delay time of 8.68 ؎ 0.06 sec. Second, when the DMTS task involves two samples (one relevant, the other irrelevant), bees can be trained to learn to use the relevant sample to perform the task if (i) the relevant sample is always at a fixed position, or (ii) the relevant sample always has the same place in the sequence of presentation (always first or always second). Bees that have learned to use the relevant sample and to ignore the irrelevant sample can generalize this learning, and apply it to novel sets of sample and comparison stimuli that they have never previously encountered. The findings point to a remarkably robust, and yet plastic, working memory in the honey bee.honey bee learning ͉ matching-to-sample ͉ maze ͉ tunnel

Mind the Gap: Olfactory Trace Conditioning in Honeybees

“…In this paradigm, a bee has to keep a transient nonassociative memory of the sample stimulus and then apply a learned rule to choose the right stimulus. The largest effective time interval between the sample was ϳ5 s (Zhang et al, 2005), a value close to the 6 s odor trace found here (Fig. 2 B).…”

Cognition in Invertebrates

“…These results document that bees learn rules relating stimuli in their environment. The capacity of honeybees to solve DMTS tasks has recently been verified (Zhang et al, , 2005. It was found that the working memory for the sample underlying the solving of DMTS is ,5 s (Zhang et al, 2005) and thus coincides with the duration of other visual and olfactory short-term memories characterized in simpler forms of associative learning in honeybees (see Section 1.26.6).…”

“…It was found that the working memory for the sample underlying the solving of DMTS is ,5 s (Zhang et al, 2005) and thus coincides with the duration of other visual and olfactory short-term memories characterized in simpler forms of associative learning in honeybees (see Section 1.26.6). Moreover, bees trained in a DMTS task can learn to pay attention to one of two different samples presented successively in a flight tunnel (either to the first or to the second) and can transfer the learning of this sequence weight to novel samples (Zhang et al, 2005).…”

“…If the bee matches its choice to the sample it is rewarded with sucrose solution . Using this paradigm, Zhang et al (2005) estimated the duration of the working memory for the sample, which allows a bee to choose between alternatives after passing though it. The duration of such a working memory was around 5 s. Longer delays between exposure to the sample and subsequent choice of stimuli result in random choices.…”

Simultaneous mastering of two abstract concepts by the miniature brain of bees

“…In this experimental framework, bees can learn, through experience, to navigate in complex mazes (12), to categorize objects based on coincident visual features (11,(13)(14)(15), and to master discriminations based on identity (16,17) and numerosity (18)(19)(20). Bees can also learn the concept of above/ below with respect to a constant reference (e.g., a horizontal line) (21), but whether bees can reach a level of abstraction allowing them to master multiple concepts simultaneously is an intriguing question that currently remains unknown and that goes beyond all previous attempts to characterize cognitive power of insect brains (22).…”