Basic computational properties of Kenyon cell in the mushroom body of honeybee

The mushroom body of insects has been considered to be mainly involved in t he information processing and learning functions of insect nervous system. It contains small intrinsic neurons, called Kenyon cell (KC). The outputs o f projection neurons in the sensory lobes are converged onto KCs and the ou tputs of KCs are sent to various regions of the brain. However, the details of response and function of KC have not yet been revealed, because of the difficulty of experiment. In this study, a compartment model of KC was cons tructed and simulated for the multiple synaptic inputs. It was shown that t he soma response propagated to the alpha and beta lobes in a few millisecon ds. The responses were strongly depended on the parameters of dendrite. Tha t is, KC has capabilities to generate the responses like weighted logical A ND or OR based on the dendritic morphological characteristics. (C) 2000 Els evier Science B.V. All rights reserved.