Immediate perception of a reward is distinct from the reward’s long-term salience
John P McGinnis,
Huoqing Jiang,
Moutaz Ali Agha,
Consuelo Perez Sanchez,
Jeff Lange,
Zulin Yu,
Frederic Marion-Poll,
Kausik Si
Affiliations
John P McGinnis
Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States; Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, United States
Huoqing Jiang
Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States
Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, United States; Department of Integrative and Molecular Physiology, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, United States
Reward perception guides all aspects of animal behavior. However, the relationship between the perceived value of a reward, the latent value of a reward, and the behavioral response remains unclear. Here we report that, given a choice between two sweet and chemically similar sugars—L- and D-arabinose—Drosophila melanogaster prefers D- over L- arabinose, but forms long-term memories of L-arabinose more reliably. Behavioral assays indicate that L-arabinose-generated memories require sugar receptor Gr43a, and calcium imaging and electrophysiological recordings indicate that L- and D-arabinose differentially activate Gr43a-expressing neurons. We posit that the immediate valence of a reward is not always predictive of the long-term reinforcement value of that reward, and that a subset of sugar-sensing neurons may generate distinct representations of similar sugars, allowing for rapid assessment of the salient features of various sugar rewards and generation of reward-specific behaviors. However, how sensory neurons communicate information about L-arabinose quality and concentration—features relevant for long-term memory—remains unknown.