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Science 8 July 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5732, pp. 307 - 310
DOI: 10.1126/science.1111280
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Reports

Crossmodal Interactions Between Olfactory and Visual Learning in Drosophila

Jianzeng Guo1 and Aike Guo1,2*

Different modalities of sensation interact in a synergistic or antagonistic manner during sensory perception, but whether there is also interaction during memory acquisition is largely unknown. In Drosophila reinforcement learning, we found that conditioning with concurrent visual and olfactory cues reduced the threshold for unimodal memory retrieval. Furthermore, bimodal preconditioning followed by unimodal conditioning with either a visual or olfactory cue led to crossmodal memory transfer. Crossmodal memory acquisition in Drosophila may contribute significantly to learning in a natural environment.

1 Institute of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences; Key Laboratory of Neurobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China.
2 State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: akguo{at}ion.ac.cn

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