Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 3, 2025
In vivo Ca2+- Imaging of Mushroom Body Neurons During Olfactory Learning in the Honey Bee
Published on: August 18, 2009
Visual learning in a virtual reality environment upregulates immediate early gene expression in the mushroom bodies
Haiyang Geng1,2, Gregory Lafon1, Aurore Avarguès-Weber1
1Research Centre on Animal Cognition, Center for Integrative Biology, CNRS, University of Toulouse, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062, Toulouse, cedex 09, France.
Abstract:
Free-flying bees learn efficiently to solve numerous visual tasks. Yet, the neural underpinnings of this capacity remain unexplored. We used a 3D virtual reality (VR) environment to study visual learning and determine if it leads to changes in immediate early gene (IEG) expression in specific areas of the bee brain. We focused on kakusei, Hr38 and Egr1, three IEGs that have been related to bee foraging and orientation, and compared their relative expression in the calyces of the mushroom bodies, the optic lobes and the rest of the brain after color discrimination learning. Bees learned to discriminate virtual stimuli displaying different colors and retained the information learned. Successful learners exhibited Egr1 upregulation only in the calyces of the mushroom bodies, thus uncovering a privileged involvement of these brain regions in associative color learning and the usefulness of Egr1 as a marker of neural activity induced by this phenomenon.
