Calcium provides the trigger enabling honey bees to remember what they have learned, according to research just published in the journal BMC Biology. Researchers manipulated the concentration of calcium within cells of the honey bee brain to see how calcium ions might affect memory and learning.
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Scientists studied a learned behavior in the bees, extension of the proboscis in response to olfactory stimuli associated with food. Three days after decreasing calcium levels during learning, the bees stopped responding to the odor, and three days after increasing calcium during learning, bees' response to the odor were stronger.
The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the CNRS, the Université de Toulouse and the French Calcium Research Network, led by Jean-Christophe Sandoz.
Comments
How in the heck do they change how much calcium they have, by what they eat? I’d like to see that experiment.
In fact, the authors have injected some drugs which lead to a specific increase of the level of the intracellular calcium. Interestingly, this calcium increase leads to an enhancement of mnesic performances!