Immediate perception of a reward is distinct from the reward's long-term salience
- Stowers Institute for Medical Research, United States
- Evolution, Génomes, Comportement & Ecologie, CNRS, IRD, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Abstract
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 (the isomer present in ripening fruits) more reliably. Behavioral assays indicate that L-arabinose-generated memories require sugar receptor Gr43a, and calcium imaging and electrophysiological recording 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.
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Funding
Stowers Institute for Medical Research (SIMR funding)
- Kausik Si
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2016, McGinnis et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Immediate perception of a reward is distinct from the reward's long-term salience
eLife 5:e22283.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22283
