Physical traces underlying simple memories can be confined to a single group of cells in the brain. In the fly Drosophila melanogaster, the Kenyon cells of the mushroom bodies house traces for both appetitive and aversive odor memories. The adenylate cyclase protein, Rutabaga, has been shown to mediate both traces. Here, we show that, for appetitive learning, another group of cells can addition...

The two experiments presented in this paper examine the effects of strategies and interference tasks on odor recognition. In the first experiment (an extension of Lyman and McDaniel’s study from 1986), participants were asked to smell 30 odors and to perform different elaborative tasks for each of them such as: (1) providing a name or a short definition; (2) creating an image; (3) describing a ...

Age-related changes in learning and memory are common in rodents. However, direct comparisons of the effects of aging on learning and memory in both males and females are lacking. The present study examined whether memory deteriorates with increasing age in C57BL/6NIA mice, and whether age-related changes in learning and memory are similar in both sexes. Male and female mice (five, 17 and 25 mo...

Rats can learn to forage among olfactory cues to associate one with reward in only 3 massed trials. The learning is achieved in less than 10 min and results in a memory trace lasting at least 1wk week. To study the neuro-anatomical circuits involved in the memory formation we used immunoreactivity to the immediate early gene c-fos as a marker for neuronal activity induced by the learning. The p...

Recent studies using functional optical imaging have revealed that cellular memory traces form in different areas of the insect brain after olfactory classical conditioning. These traces are revealed as increased calcium signals or synaptic release from defined neurons, and include a short-lived trace that forms immediately after conditioning in antennal lobe projection neurons, an early trace ...

The olfactory sensory network is a unique brain system. Among human sensory systems, only olfaction has a direct connection to the brain and no thalamic relay. In terms of tissue and cellular repair, the olfactory system is unusual, along with the hippocampal dentate gyrus, as an example of central nervous tissue in which neurogenesis persists. Additionally, olfaction has been shown to have an ...