Recording brain activity in vivo during learning is fundamental
to understanding how memories are formed. We used functional calcium imaging
to track odor representations in the primary chemosensory center of the honeybee,
the antennal lobe, while training animals to discriminate a rewarded odor
from an unrewarded one. Our results show that associative learning transforms
odor representations and decorrelates activity patterns for the rewarded versus
the unrewarded odor, making them less similar. Additionally, activity for
the rewarded but not for the unrewarded odor is increased. These results indicate
that neural representations of the environment may be modified through associative
learning.
