Using an Insect Mushroom Body Circuit to Encode Route Memory in Complex Natural Environments.
Using an Insect Mushroom Body Circuit to Encode Route Memory in Complex Natural Environments.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004683
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发表时间：
2016-02
影响因子：
4.3
通讯作者：
Webb B
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ardin P;Peng F;Mangan M;Lagogiannis K;Webb B
像许多其他动物一样，蚂蚁利用视觉记忆在复杂的环境中遵循延伸的路线，但尚不清楚它们的小大脑是如何实现这种能力的。蘑菇体神经丸已被确定为昆虫大脑中至关重要的记忆回路，但它们的功能主要用于探索简单的嗅觉关联任务。我们发现，这个电路的尖峰神经模型最初是用来描述果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）的嗅觉关联的，也可以解释沙漠蚂蚁（Cataglyphis velox）在复杂的自然环境中快速学习视觉路线的能力。我们进一步证明，抽象该电路的关键计算原理，包括稀疏编码的一次性学习，可以在数百个独立图像上估计蚂蚁蘑菇体的理论存储容量。我们提出了一个直接基于昆虫神经解剖学的模型，该模型能够解释蚂蚁的路线跟随能力。我们展示了这种蘑菇体电路具有存储大量图像的潜力，这些图像是在蚂蚁穿越路线的真实模拟中生成的，并且可以区分先前存储的图像与在错误方向上生成的高度相似的图像。因此，它可以在生态有效的测试条件下控制路线的成功再现。
Ants, like many other animals, use visual memory to follow extended routes through complex environments, but it is unknown how their small brains implement this capability. The mushroom body neuropils have been identified as a crucial memory circuit in the insect brain, but their function has mostly been explored for simple olfactory association tasks. We show that a spiking neural model of this circuit originally developed to describe fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster) olfactory association, can also account for the ability of desert ants (Cataglyphis velox) to rapidly learn visual routes through complex natural environments. We further demonstrate that abstracting the key computational principles of this circuit, which include one-shot learning of sparse codes, enables the theoretical storage capacity of the ant mushroom body to be estimated at hundreds of independent images. We propose a model based directly on insect neuroanatomy that is able to account for the route following capabilities of ants. We show this mushroom body circuit has the potential to store a large number of images, generated in a realistic simulation of an ant traversing a route, and to distinguish previously stored images from highly similar images generated when looking in the wrong direction. It can thus control successful recapitulation of routes under ecologically valid test conditions.