TY - JOUR TI - Immediate perception of a reward is distinct from the reward’s long-term salience AU - McGinnis, John P AU - Jiang, Huoqing AU - Agha, Moutaz Ali AU - Sanchez, Consuelo Perez AU - Lange, Jeff AU - Yu, Zulin AU - Marion-Poll, Frederic AU - Si, Kausik A2 - Ramaswami, Mani VL - 5 PY - 2016 DA - 2016/12/22 SP - e22283 C1 - eLife 2016;5:e22283 DO - 10.7554/eLife.22283 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22283 AB - Reward perception guides all aspects of animal behavior. However, the relationship between the perceived value of a reward, the latent value of a reward, and the behavioral response remains unclear. Here we report that, given a choice between two sweet and chemically similar sugars—L- and D-arabinose—Drosophila melanogaster prefers D- over L- arabinose, but forms long-term memories of L-arabinose more reliably. Behavioral assays indicate that L-arabinose-generated memories require sugar receptor Gr43a, and calcium imaging and electrophysiological recordings indicate that L- and D-arabinose differentially activate Gr43a-expressing neurons. We posit that the immediate valence of a reward is not always predictive of the long-term reinforcement value of that reward, and that a subset of sugar-sensing neurons may generate distinct representations of similar sugars, allowing for rapid assessment of the salient features of various sugar rewards and generation of reward-specific behaviors. However, how sensory neurons communicate information about L-arabinose quality and concentration—features relevant for long-term memory—remains unknown. KW - memory KW - reward KW - salience JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -