Spaced training forms complementary long-term memories of opposite valence inDrosophila

Abstract

AbstractForming long-term memory (LTM) in many cases requires repetitive experience spread over time. InDrosophila, aversive olfactory LTM is optimal following spaced training, multiple trials of differential odor conditioning with rest intervals. Studies often compare memory after spaced to that after massed training, same number of trials without interval. Here we show flies acquire additional information after spaced training, forming an aversive memory for the shock-paired odor and a ‘safety-memory’ for the explicitly unpaired odor. Safety-memory requires repetition, order and spacing of the training trials and relies on specific subsets of rewarding dopaminergic neurons. Co-existence of the aversive and safety memories can be measured as depression of odor-specific responses at different combinations of junctions in the mushroom body output network. Combining two particular outputs appears to signal relative safety. Learning a complementary safety memory thereby augments LTM performance after spaced training by making the odor preference more certain.