| 研究実績の概要 |
I have been studying the nature of forgetting in Drosophila. Flies can learn to associate an odor with pain. We can test for memory of this association by measuring how vigorously flies avoid this odor. As the time between learning and testing increases, flies avoid this odor less and less, indicating that they gradually forget this association. I have examined whether forgetting consists of a stochastic loss of memory in an increasing subset of flies, or whether it consists of a gradual decrease in odor avoidance in all flies. Using behavioral and statistical tests, I have found that most flies retain memory over time, but display a reduced avoidance to the pain-associated odor. This suggests that forgetting does not consist of a loss of a memory, but instead consists of an increase in uncertainty regarding a memory. These results have profound implications on how memory evolved, and also explains how short-term and middle-term memories change over time. I am currently writing a manuscript on this work.
In addition, I contributed to a manuscript, “Carbon monoxide, a retrograde messenger generated in post-synaptic mushroom body neurons evokes non-canonical dopamine release” (Ueno et al., JNeurosci 2020 Apr 29;40(18):3533-3548). This manuscript identifies a novel mechanism for dopamine release during synaptic plasticity.
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| 現在までの達成度 (区分) |
現在までの達成度 (区分)
2: おおむね順調に進展している
理由
I am currently studying how flies learn to associate different sensory stimuli that do not occur at the same time. If flies smell a new odor and are electrically shocked at the same time, they learn to associate the odor with pain, and subsequently avoid the odor. The mechanism for this association has been extensively studied. However, flies can form this association even if they are shocked some time after the odor is removed. Thus there must be some timing mechanism where flies remember the odor and are able to associate this odor with a later shock. We are studying the cellular and molecular pathways required for this timing mechanism.
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