[Effect of dunce and amnesiac genes on signal learning in Drosophila melanogaster: experiments with odors]

Abstract

The behavior of normal Drosophila and of X-linked olfactory conditioning mutants, dunce and amnesiac, was analyzed using an olfactory search task. Normal (C-S) flies quickly learn and remember which of two odors signals the presence of food and they are capable of retaining this information for at last eight hours. Both dunce and amnesiac mutants are able to learn, whereas mutant dunce do not reach the learning level of wild type C-S flies. Also dunce flies require more than one learning trial for sizeable learning effect. Reversal learning experiments showed that normal C-S flies and amnesiac are able to switch to a new food signal in response to a new experience, while the dunce mutation inhibits the acquisition of new information in reversal learning experiments.