Natural Computation: Decision-Making Facing Conflicting Visual Cues And Crossmodal Interaction Between Olfactory And Visual Learning In Drosophila

Drosophila flies can be trained in the flight simulator to operantly avoid heat by choosing certain flight orientations relative to landmarks. Flies primarily store pattern orientations associated with the absence of heat. They readily escape from heat-associated orientations under the direct influence of the reinforcer but not in the subsequent memory tests. This paper shows that Drosophila flies could be used as a new model organism for the neurobiology of cognition-like behavior