Insects Trained In Quest For Artificial Nose

Much like Pavlov conditioned his dog to salivate in anticipation of food when a bell rang, insects can be trained to perform certain behaviors when enticed with different smells. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered that when training insects, the interval between the signal, or odor, and the reward—delicious sugar water—is everything.

hey also found that this process of building odor-sucrose associations would involve a mechanism that allows integration of neural activities (mental representations) that are not nearly coincident. Understanding how associations are built between stimuli and behavior gives insight into the nature of learning. Their findings were published online in Nature Neuroscience.

Associations or meanings are formed when a connection is perceived among mental representations. In Pavlov’s experiments the dog was taught to understand that the ringing of the bell meant food. In this case, the researchers conditioned a particular species of moth, Manduca sexta, to extend its proboscis in anticipation of a dollop of sucrose after being given a scent cue.