ODOR PASSIVE-AVOIDANCE LEARNING IN INDIVIDUAL DROSOPHILA-MELANOGASTER- PARAMETRIC INVESTIGATIONS OF UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS-INTENSITY AND INTER-TRIAL-INTERVAL

Two studies investigated associative odor passive avoidance conditioni ng in individual Drosophila melanogaster. The purpose of these studies was to investigate whether variables which are known to influence ass ociative learning in mammals would have the expected effect in the Ben zer odor passive avoidance learning paradigm in D. melanogaster. The v ariables investigated were: 1) the Intensity of the Unconditional Stim ulus (US), and 2) the Inter-Trial-Interval (ITI). The results of these studies demonstrated that the strength of an odor avoidance condition ed with electric shock as the reinforcer was a function of: 1) the int ensity of the US (0, 10, 20, 40, or 80 VAC) with increasing intensitie s resulting in progressively increasing avoidance and 2) the length of the ITI (0, 15, 30, or 90 s), with increasing intervals resulting in greater learning, whether assessed in acquisition or extinction. The o verall findings of these studies are consistent with the literature on the impact of these variables on mammalian associative learning in ge neral and avoidance learning in particular. (C) 1998 Academic Press.