Citation

Appel M, Scholz CJ, Kocabey S, Savage S, König C, Yarali A. Biol. Lett. 2016; 12(12): e0657.

Affiliation

Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Royal Society Publishing)

DOI

10.1098/rsbl.2016.0657

PMID

28003518

Abstract

A painful event establishes two opponent memories: cues that are associated with pain onset are remembered negatively, whereas cues that coincide with the relief at pain offset acquire positive valence. Such punishment- versus relief-memories are conserved across species, including humans, and the balance between them is critical for adaptive behaviour with respect to pain and trauma. In the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster as a study case, we found that both punishment- and relief-memories display natural variation across wild-derived inbred strains, but they do not covary, suggesting a considerable level of dissociation in their genetic effectors. This provokes the question whether there may be heritable inter-individual differences in the balance between these opponent memories in man, with potential psycho-clinical implications.

© 2016 The Authors.

Language: en