Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Professor Volker StraubORCiD
Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.
Associative conditioning involves changes in the processing pathways activated by sensory information to link the conditioned stimulus (CS) to the conditioned behavior. Thus, conditioning can recruit neuronal elements to form new pathways for the processing of the CS and/or can change the strength of existing pathways. Using a behavioral and systems level electrophysiological approach on a tractable invertebrate circuit generating feeding in the mollusk Lymnaea stagnalis, we identified three independent pathways for the processing of the CS amyl acetate used in appetitive conditioning. Two of these pathways, one suppressing and the other stimulating feeding, mediate responses to the CS in naive animals. The effects of these two pathways on feeding behavior are unaltered by conditioning. In contrast, the CS response of a third stimulatory pathway is significantly enhanced after conditioning, becoming an important contributor to the overall CS response. This is unusual because, in most of the previous examples in which naive animals already respond to the CS, memory formation results from changes in the strength of pathways that mediate the existing response. Here, we show that, in the molluscan feeding system, both modified and unmodified pathways are activated in parallel by the CS after conditioning, and it is their integration that results in the conditioned response.
Author(s): Straub VA, Kemenes I, O'Shea M, Benjamin PR
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Neuroscience
Year: 2006
Volume: 26
Issue: 15
Pages: 4139-4146
ISSN (print): 0270-6474
ISSN (electronic): 1529-2401
Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0489-06.2006
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0489-06.2006
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric