Piqueret Baptiste, Sandoz Jean-Christophe, d'Ettorre Patrizia
Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology (LEEC), University of Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 93430 Villetaneuse, France.
Evolution, Genomes, Behaviour and Ecology, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, IRD, Université Paris-Saclay, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
R Soc Open Sci. 2019 Jun 19;6(6):190778. doi: 10.1098/rsos.190778. eCollection 2019 Jun.
Learning is a widespread phenomenon that allows behavioural flexibility when individuals face new situations. However, learned information may lose its value over time. If such a memory endures, it can be deleterious to individuals. The process of extinction allows memory updating when the initial information is not relevant anymore. Extinction is widespread among animals, including humans. We investigated associative appetitive learning in an ant species that is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, . We studied acquisition and memory between 1 h and one week after conditioning, as well as the extinction process. Ants learn very rapidly, their memory lasts up to 3 days, decreases slowly over time and is highly resistant to extinction, even after a single conditioning trial. Using a pharmacological approach, we show that this single-trial memory critically depends on protein synthesis (long-term memory). These results indicate that individual ant workers of show remarkable learning and memory performances. Intriguingly, they also show a strong resistance to updating learned associations. Resistance to extinction may be advantageous when the environment is stochastic and individuals need to switch often from one learned task to another.
学习是一种普遍存在的现象，当个体面对新情况时，它能使行为具有灵活性。然而，所学信息可能会随着时间的推移而失去其价值。如果这样的记忆持续存在，它可能对个体有害。消退过程允许在初始信息不再相关时更新记忆。消退在包括人类在内的动物中广泛存在。我们在一种广泛分布于北半球的蚂蚁物种中研究了联想性食欲学习。我们研究了条件反射后1小时到一周之间的习得和记忆，以及消退过程。蚂蚁学习速度非常快，它们的记忆可持续长达3天，随着时间的推移缓慢下降，并且即使经过单次条件反射试验，也对消退具有高度抗性。使用药理学方法，我们表明这种单次试验记忆关键取决于蛋白质合成（长期记忆）。这些结果表明，单个蚂蚁工蚁表现出卓越的学习和记忆能力。有趣的是，它们对更新所学联想也表现出很强的抗性。当环境具有随机性且个体需要经常从一个所学任务切换到另一个任务时，对消退的抗性可能是有利的。
