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The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries

The honeybee Apis mellifera, with a brain of only 960,000 neurons and the ability to perform sophisticated cognitive tasks, has become an excellent model in life sciences and in particular in cognitive neurosciences. It has been used in our laboratories to investigate brain and behavioural asymmetri...

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Autores principales: Frasnelli, Elisa, Haase, Albrecht, Rigosi, Elisa, Anfora, Gianfranco, Rogers, Lesley J., Vallortigara, Giorgio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26462583
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects5010120
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author Frasnelli, Elisa
Haase, Albrecht
Rigosi, Elisa
Anfora, Gianfranco
Rogers, Lesley J.
Vallortigara, Giorgio
author_facet Frasnelli, Elisa
Haase, Albrecht
Rigosi, Elisa
Anfora, Gianfranco
Rogers, Lesley J.
Vallortigara, Giorgio
author_sort Frasnelli, Elisa
collection PubMed
description The honeybee Apis mellifera, with a brain of only 960,000 neurons and the ability to perform sophisticated cognitive tasks, has become an excellent model in life sciences and in particular in cognitive neurosciences. It has been used in our laboratories to investigate brain and behavioural asymmetries, i.e., the different functional specializations of the right and the left sides of the brain. It is well known that bees can learn to associate an odour stimulus with a sugar reward, as demonstrated by extension of the proboscis when presented with the trained odour in the so-called Proboscis Extension Reflex (PER) paradigm. Bees recall this association better when trained using their right antenna than they do when using their left antenna. They also retrieve short-term memory of this task better when using the right antenna. On the other hand, when tested for long-term memory recall, bees respond better when using their left antenna. Here we review a series of behavioural studies investigating bees’ lateralization, integrated with electrophysiological measurements to study asymmetries of olfactory sensitivity, and discuss the possible evolutionary origins of these asymmetries. We also present morphological data obtained by scanning electron microscopy and two-photon microscopy. Finally, a behavioural study conducted in a social context is summarised, showing that honeybees control context-appropriate social interactions using their right antenna, rather than the left, thus suggesting that lateral biases in behaviour might be associated with requirements of social life.
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spelling pubmed-45926342015-10-08 The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries Frasnelli, Elisa Haase, Albrecht Rigosi, Elisa Anfora, Gianfranco Rogers, Lesley J. Vallortigara, Giorgio Insects Review The honeybee Apis mellifera, with a brain of only 960,000 neurons and the ability to perform sophisticated cognitive tasks, has become an excellent model in life sciences and in particular in cognitive neurosciences. It has been used in our laboratories to investigate brain and behavioural asymmetries, i.e., the different functional specializations of the right and the left sides of the brain. It is well known that bees can learn to associate an odour stimulus with a sugar reward, as demonstrated by extension of the proboscis when presented with the trained odour in the so-called Proboscis Extension Reflex (PER) paradigm. Bees recall this association better when trained using their right antenna than they do when using their left antenna. They also retrieve short-term memory of this task better when using the right antenna. On the other hand, when tested for long-term memory recall, bees respond better when using their left antenna. Here we review a series of behavioural studies investigating bees’ lateralization, integrated with electrophysiological measurements to study asymmetries of olfactory sensitivity, and discuss the possible evolutionary origins of these asymmetries. We also present morphological data obtained by scanning electron microscopy and two-photon microscopy. Finally, a behavioural study conducted in a social context is summarised, showing that honeybees control context-appropriate social interactions using their right antenna, rather than the left, thus suggesting that lateral biases in behaviour might be associated with requirements of social life. MDPI 2014-01-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4592634/ /pubmed/26462583 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects5010120 Text en © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Frasnelli, Elisa
Haase, Albrecht
Rigosi, Elisa
Anfora, Gianfranco
Rogers, Lesley J.
Vallortigara, Giorgio
The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries
title The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries
title_full The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries
title_fullStr The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries
title_full_unstemmed The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries
title_short The Bee as a Model to Investigate Brain and Behavioural Asymmetries
title_sort bee as a model to investigate brain and behavioural asymmetries
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26462583
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects5010120
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