A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that honey bees can remember positive and negative experiences—such as taking care of their young or fending off an enemy. These memories are then stored in specific areas of their brains, according to how good or bad the experience was.
Scientists have long known that vertebrates—animals with tail bones—like ourselves are capable of storing memories of pleasure and pain in distinct brain areas such as this. However, this has never been documented before in the minds of bees.
"We wanted to know whether bees, with a tiny brain, devote different parts of it to processing social information that is either negative or positive," Gene Robinson, an author of the study from Urbana-Champaign's Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, told Newsweek.
Science on the InsideHow neuroscience graduate students are bringing science education to youth behind bars
WelcomeNot just for "new" grads
Llano Recieves Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
Hauber "Cowbird" LabThe Hauber lab (@cowbirdlab/Twitter) focuses on the evolution of recognition systems in avian brood parasites. It shifts between behavioral, developmental, physiological, and molecular tools.
Caught with the Cookie Jar"Slug City" studies the neural basis of decision with sea slugs and octopuses. The research aim is to study how animals organize their behavior by integrating motivation, experience and sensation.
Pulling Apart the BrainThe Interactive 3D brain model from BrainFacts.org.
More Department News
- The Juvenile Detention Center Outreach program, conceived by neuroscience student Ian Traniello, has been running for five years. To date, roughly a dozen neuroscience students have participated, most of whom had never taught behind bars. Now, the JDC outreach team has been on several local panels discussing their outreach work, presented posters at the annual Society for Neuroscience Meeting, and had their work highlighted in Science.
- According to bee expert and University of Illinois professor Gene E. Robinson, urban environments like Chicago are actually great for bees. There are often less pesticides and a wider variety of flowering plants and trees to feed on.
- The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will fund two projects for research on human performance optimization within United States war fighters at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
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Faculty Spotlight
How would you describe your background? (I.E. where you are from? How did you first get interested in your area of research? Etc.) I always wanted to do biology. I always found that interesting, I took AP biology in high school and said, “This is what I want to major in.” Even though I went to two different undergrads, I was always a biology major. I guess I would say I say that my Ph.D. and post-docs were all in hormones and biological rhythms. I entered graduate school to do reproduction, but I had a lab that also did biological rhythms, which I knew nothing about. So that’s the area I’ve been in since 97.
Alumni Spotlight
Dr. Daeyeol Lee has been named a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Lee graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995 (MS in Biology) and 1995 (PhD in Neuroscience). Established by Michael Bloomberg, Lee will be among 50 professors from around the world named to these posts who are pioneering interdisciplinary fields.
