j *@ - Sociedade Brasileira de Psicologia

MEMORY IN HONEY BEES
RANDOLF M ENZEL
Universidade Livre de Berlim
It is a well established fact in psychology and nem obiology thnt memory does
not exist in its f'mal form immediately after learning. Instead memory is formed and
shaped through internal processes independent and separated in time from the initiating
learning events. Evidence comes from psycholo#cal data on humnns and animnls
as early as Ebbinghaus' famous discoveries (1885) on human learning of nonsense
sylables, from clinical data on lnemory dysfunctions in m an, and from physiological
data on animnls. These data are far from being subsumed under one condse theory of
memory phases, but the most strongly supported notion assllmes a sequence of
memory phases which differ with respect to their neural and celular substrate and
with respect to their control over behavior. However, one basic notion is agreed upon
by most neuroscientists, and tlut is that early forms of memory are not just an extension
in time to form late or stable forms of memory. &> far, physiological studies have
stressed the notion that the memory phases refleit a sequence of molecular, celular,
and neural network events, which appear as lmavoidable consequences of time
consllming cellular cascades in forming a stable and long-lasting mem ory trace. What
has been neglected in many studies is the question of which fundamtntal advantages
result from a sequence of memory phases and how specialized preprogrammed nemal
routines affect the content of memory dlm'ng its processing in memory phases.
. A general problem faced by m ost studies on memory processing is that several
or many learning trials are required in order to establish a strong memory trace, and
thus that learning and memory events are intimately confounded in behavioral and
physiologcal studies. How can one uncover the memory processes if repeated
sequences of retrieval and storage interfere with the internal (automatic) proceses
initiated by each single learning trial? An essential prerequisite for studies on memory
processing is, therefore, a behavioral and physiolo#cal paradim which leads to
substantial asodative learning byjust one lelrafng trial. The associative nature of such
a learning trial is of peat help for desi> ing the proper control experiments pm icular
with respect to nonessodative and motivational effeds. 'l'he only paradigm I know of
which has been analyzed to a peat depee in this respect is the one trial olfactory
conditioning in honey bees. Olfactory conditioning is clearly of an associative nature
with the characters of a weldefmed trace conditioning situation , and which leads to a
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