CNRS/ESPCI ParisTech研究人员通过对果蝇嗅觉记忆测试发现，果蝇在群体中比单独时，记忆水平更好。该研究报告发表在10月13日Current Biology杂志上。
对多数动物物种来说，个体处于群体环境中，个体能够更好的学习同伴的行为，从而能更好的应对多样化的生存环境，如寻找食物的环境或躲避天敌。
在该试验中，神经生物学家使果蝇处于某种气味中，同时对果蝇实施弱电击刺激（类似于巴甫洛夫经典条件反射）。上述条件刺激实施24或48小时后，研究人员对果蝇进行了嗅觉记忆测试，测试果蝇对与不愉快电击刺激相关的气味的记忆能力。研究结果表明，果蝇在处在群体中比单独时对气味记忆更深刻，但是，果蝇单独测试表现出记忆能力差的原因并非是因为没有记住该气味，而是因为它们无法从记忆中提取相关信息。
研究人员认为，在这个实验中，由于气味的出现代表着一种潜在危险的出现，已经形成条件反射的果蝇能够在气味出现时，给同伴发出“警报”信号，引起周围其他果蝇的注意，这样也能够增强果蝇的记忆检索能力。
这项对果蝇进行的研究，或许有助于理解社会环境对记忆调制(memory modulation)以及决策制定(decision making)所产生的影响。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Current Biology,24 September 2009 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.017
Social Facilitation of Long-Lasting Memory Retrieval in Drosophila
Marie-Ange Chabaud1, 2, 5, Guillaume Isabel1, 5, Laure Kaiser2, 3, 4 and Thomas Preat1, ,
1 Genes and Dynamics of Memory Systems, Neurobiology Unit, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, école Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75005 Paris, France
2 Développement, Evolution, et Plasticité du Système Nerveux, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1 Avenue de la Terrasse, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
3 Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique Centre de Versailles-Grignon, UMR 1272, Physiologie de l'Insecte Signalisation et Communication, Route de St Cyr, 78026 Versailles Cedex, France
4 Present address: Institut de Recherche pour la Développement, UR 072, Laboratoire Evolution, Génomes, et Spéciation, UPR 9034, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1 Avenue de la Terrasse, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
5 These authors contributed equally to the work.
Recent studies demonstrate that social interactions can have a profound influence on Drosophila melanogaster behavior [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] and cuticular pheromone patterns [8,9,10]. Olfactory memory performance has mostly been investigated in groups, and previous studies have reported that grouped flies do not interact with each other and behave in the same way as individual flies during short-term memory retrieval [11,12,13]. However, the influence of social effects on the two known forms of Drosophila long-lasting associative memory, anesthesia-resistant memory (ARM) and long-term memory (LTM), has never been reported. We show here that ARM is displayed by individual flies but is socially facilitated; flies trained for ARM interact within a group to improve their conditioned performance. In contrast, testing shows LTM improvement in individual flies rather than in a group. We show that the social facilitation of ARM during group testing is independent of the social context of training and does not involve nonspecific aggregation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that social interactions facilitate ARM retrieval. We also show that social interactions necessary for this facilitation are specifically generated by trained flies: when single flies trained for ARM are mixed with groups of naive flies, they display poor retrieval, whereas mixing with groups trained either for ARM or LTM enhances performance.
