Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 41125 Modena, Italy.
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, T2N 1N4.
J Exp Biol. 2024 Apr 15;227(8). doi: 10.1242/jeb.247325. Epub 2024 Apr 19.
Animals, including humans, learn and remember to avoid a novel food when its ingestion is followed, hours later, by sickness - a phenomenon initially identified during World War II as a potential means of pest control. In the 1960s, John Garcia (for whom the effect is now named) demonstrated that this form of conditioned taste aversion had broader implications, showing that it is a rapid but long-lasting taste-specific food aversion with a fundamental role in the evolution of behaviour. From the mid-1970s onward, the principles of the Garcia effect were translated to humans, showing its role in different clinical conditions (e.g. side-effects linked to chemotherapy). However, in the last two decades, the number of studies on the Garcia effect has undergone a considerable decline. Since its discovery in rodents, this form of learning was thought to be exclusive to mammals; however, we recently provided the first demonstration that a Garcia effect can be formed in an invertebrate model organism, the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Thus, in this Commentary, after reviewing the experiments that led to the first characterization of the Garcia effect in rodents, we describe the recent evidence for the Garcia effect in L. stagnalis, which may pave the way for future studies in other invertebrates and mammals. This article aims to inspire future translational and ecological studies that characterize the conserved mechanisms underlying this form of learning with deep evolutionary roots, which can be used to address a range of different biological questions.
包括人类在内的动物在摄入某种食物后，数小时后如果感到不适，就会学会并记住避免这种新食物——这种现象最初在第二次世界大战期间被发现，是一种潜在的害虫防治手段。20 世纪 60 年代，约翰·加西亚（John Garcia）（这种效应现在以他的名字命名）证明了这种条件性味觉厌恶具有更广泛的意义，表明它是一种快速但持久的特定味觉食物厌恶，在行为进化中起着根本作用。从 20 世纪 70 年代中期开始，加西亚效应的原理被应用于人类，显示了它在不同临床情况下（例如与化疗相关的副作用）的作用。然而，在过去的二十年里，关于加西亚效应的研究数量大幅下降。自该效应在啮齿动物中被发现以来，人们一直认为这种学习形式仅存在于哺乳动物中；然而，我们最近首次证明，一种加西亚效应可以在一种无脊椎动物模式生物——田螺（Lymnaea stagnalis）中形成。因此，在这篇评论中，在回顾了导致首次在啮齿动物中描述加西亚效应的实验之后，我们描述了最近在田螺中发现的加西亚效应的证据，这可能为未来在其他无脊椎动物和哺乳动物中进行研究铺平道路。本文旨在激发未来的转化和生态研究，以深入了解这种具有深远进化根源的学习形式的保守机制，这些机制可用于解决一系列不同的生物学问题。
