Do Caenorhabditis elegans exhibit spatial learning? Using a t-maze to explore association of a spatial environment with an attractant

UBC Undergraduate Research

Do Caenorhabditis elegans exhibit spatial learning? Using a t-maze to explore association of a spatial environment with an attractant Law, Jackie WY

Abstract

This study investigated spatial learning in Caenorabditis elegans; the ability to associate reinforcing cues with a location. Naive, wildtype C. elegans were trained in a microfluidic t-maze in the presence of diacetyl (a volatile attractant associated with food) and subsequently tested to see if they could associate diacetyl with one arm of the t-maze. 70-80% of the subjects chemotaxed towards diacetyl during training phase, but they randomly chose left or right when diacetyl was absent (number of subjects that chose diacetyl being under 65%). From our experiments, it is unlikely that the worms are associating diacetyl with one arm of the t-maze, but appears to be using some component of the atmosphere as a cue.

Item Metadata

Title	Do Caenorhabditis elegans exhibit spatial learning? Using a t-maze to explore association of a spatial environment with an attractant
Creator	Law, Jackie WY
Contributor	Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health
Date Issued	2009-05-08
Description	This study investigated spatial learning in Caenorabditis elegans; the ability to associate reinforcing cues with a location. Naive, wildtype C. elegans were trained in a microfluidic t-maze in the presence of diacetyl (a volatile attractant associated with food) and subsequently tested to see if they could associate diacetyl with one arm of the t-maze. 70-80% of the subjects chemotaxed towards diacetyl during training phase, but they randomly chose left or right when diacetyl was absent (number of subjects that chose diacetyl being under 65%). From our experiments, it is unlikely that the worms are associating diacetyl with one arm of the t-maze, but appears to be using some component of the atmosphere as a cue.
Extent	119296 bytes
Subject	c. elegans maze; invertebrate learning memory; t-maze; spatial learning; diacetyl attractant c. elegans; chemotax environmental cue; conditioning c. elegans
Genre	Working Paper
Type	Text
File Format	application/msword
Language	eng
Series	University of British Columbia. Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference (MURC)
Date Available	2009-05-08
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI	10.14288/1.0103632
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7902
Affiliation	Arts, Faculty of; Psychology, Department of; Medicine, Faculty of
Campus	UBCV
Peer Review Status	Unreviewed
Scholarly Level	Undergraduate
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

Open Collections

UBC Undergraduate Research