PgmNr D1278: Differences in the cyclic-AMP-induced plasticity of the odor responses among the Kenyon cell subpopulations: a single-cell imaging study.

Authors:
T. Louis; S. Tomchik


Institutes
The Scripps Research Institute, JUPITER, FL.


Keyword: learning/memory

Abstract:

In Drosophila, the mushroom bodies (MB), a critical structure for olfactory learning and memory, are formed by three different types of Kenyon cells (KC), α/β, α′/β′ and γ. They all received information from the olfactory pathway and are modulated by extrinsic dopaminergic neurons also known for their role in associative learning and memory. Recently, our lab demonstrated that the modulation of cAMP levels in KCs induced by simultaneous odor presentation and artificial activation of TH-GAL4+ dopaminergic neurons or by using an adenylate cyclase activator, forskolin, lead to an increased of odor-evoked calcium response only in the γ lobes of MB.  Nevertheless, it was still unknown if the learning-related plasticity seen in the g lobes relies on an enhancement of the response in cells that responded before training or on the recruitment of new responding cells. To answer this question, we designed an in vivo Ca2+-imaging experiment for which we recorded the odor response in the soma of each KC subtype before and after forskolin exposure. Our work shows that, at the single-cell level, forskolin exposure produces diverse effects on the odor-evoked calcium responses in individual neurons, both across KC subpopulations and within a given subpopulation.