Project Details
Projekt
Octopamine function revisited: Reward processing in Drosophila larvae
Subject Area
Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
Term
from 2019 to 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426722269
Learning and memory enables animals and humans to timely adapt behavior according to past experience and present circumstances. In Pavlovian conditioning for instance, animals associate sensory cues with the presence of punishment or reward. Although learning and memory studies are possible in many organisms, research in Drosophila has gained a special momentum over the last 50 years. The enhanced cellular resolution based on its genetically tractable and numerically less complex brain provides considerable potential to understand conserved learning and memory functions at the molecular, cellular, physiological and small neural network level. Initial work in Drosophila suggested that dopaminergic neurons signal punishment and octopaminergic neurons -octopamine is the invertebrate functional analogue of norepinephrine- signals reward. However, recent results conclude that distinct sets of dopaminergic neurons provide key instructive signals for both reward and punishment. This seems to overturn the previous functionally separated model and limits the function of octopaminergic neurons in reward processing. Therefore, the following question arises: What does the octopaminergic system really do during reward processing?
DFG Programme
Research Grants
