Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
Department of Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
J Exp Biol. 2024 Sep 1;227(17). doi: 10.1242/jeb.247835. Epub 2024 Sep 3.
In the context of slow-fast behavioral variation, fast individuals are hypothesized to be those who prioritize speed over accuracy while slow individuals are those which do the opposite. Since energy metabolism is a critical component of neural and cognitive functioning, this predicts such differences in cognitive style to be reflected at the level of the brain. We tested this idea in honeybees by first classifying individuals into slow and fast cognitive phenotypes based on a learning assay and then measuring their brain respiration with high-resolution respirometry. Our results broadly show that inter-individual differences in cognition are reflected in differences in brain mass and accompanying energy use at the level of the brain and the whole animal. Larger brains had lower mass-specific energy usage and bees with larger brains had a higher metabolic rate. These differences in brain respiration and brain mass were, in turn, associated with cognitive differences, such that bees with larger brains were fast cognitive phenotypes whereas those with smaller brains were slow cognitive phenotypes. We discuss these results in the context of the role of energy in brain functioning and slow-fast decision making and speed accuracy trade-off.
在快慢行为变化的背景下，快速个体被假设为那些优先考虑速度而不是准确性的个体，而慢速个体则相反。由于能量代谢是神经和认知功能的关键组成部分，这就预测了这种认知风格的差异会在大脑水平上得到反映。我们通过首先根据学习测试将个体分类为慢和快的认知表型，然后使用高分辨率呼吸测量法测量它们的大脑呼吸，来验证这个想法在蜜蜂中的合理性。我们的结果广泛表明，个体间认知差异反映在大脑质量和大脑以及整个动物层面上相应的能量使用差异上。大脑越大，单位质量的能量使用越低，大脑越大的蜜蜂代谢率越高。这些呼吸和大脑质量上的差异与认知差异有关，即大脑较大的蜜蜂是快速认知表型，而大脑较小的蜜蜂是慢速认知表型。我们在能量在大脑功能和快慢决策以及速度准确性权衡中的作用的背景下讨论了这些结果。
