Learned helplessness

Recently I have moved to Pune, India. And at our very new, baby insitute, we have been having some wonderful, quirky and insightful lectures. Every week atleast one!
Last week was the turn of a neurobiologist who works on conciousness, free will and genetics. He uses the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, and demonstrated in a heat box experiment the process of "learned helplessness". Conceptually easy- the fly is in a box, which can be heated. And a computer monitors the activity of the fly. The moment is stands still, the temperature is raised to uncomfortable levels till the fly moves again.
The fly can and does learn that its better for it to keep moving if it doesn't want to be punished.

At the same time another fly is in a separate heat box, which however is controlled by the same pulses of heating as the first. However the behaviour of the first fly determines when the heat pulse is given to both. As a consequence the second fly learns over time, that no matter how it changes its behaviour, it will not improve its own lot. And it gives up trying- Learned Helplessness!

So elegant. And Prozac can reverse it! Something to think about!

REFERENCE:


Memories in Drosophila Heat-box Learning

Gabriele Putz and Martin Heisenberg
Lehrstuhl für Genetik und Neurobiologie, Biozentrum, Am Hubland, D97074, Wuerzburg, Germany

Learning and memory processes of operant conditioning in the heat-box are analyzed. In a search for
conditioning parameters leading to high retention scores, intermittent training is shown to give better results
than those of continuous training. Immediate retention tests contain two memory components, a spatial
preference for one side of the chamber and a “stay-where-you-are-effect.” Intermittent training strengthens the
latter. In the second part, memory dynamics is investigated. Flies are trained in one chamber and tested in a
second one after a brief reminder training. With this direct transfer, memory scores reflect an associative
learning process in the first chamber. To investigate memory retention after extended time periods, indirect
transfer experiments are performed. The fly is transferred to a different environment between training and
test phases. With this procedure, an aftereffect of the training can still be observed 2 h later. Surprisingly,
exposure to the chamber without conditioning also leads to a memory effect in the indirect transfer
experiment. This exposure effect reveals a dispositional change that facilitates operant learning during the
reminder training. The various memory effects are independent of the mushroom bodies.