After pausing T-Maze experiments because of the issues with my negative control, I should now be abled to proceed.

Since it’s been a bit more than 2 months since the last results, this was the state of the experiments back then:

Now I added the following results:

Leading to an updated version of all results:

In this set of JoyStick experiments, I tested flies expressing the CsChrimson channel in OA-VuMa octopaminergic neurons, which are the Drosophila counterparts to the honeybee OA-VUMmx1 neurons. There are still a few flies left, but for now activation of these neurons does not seem to mediate any strong innate valence. There may be a slight tendency for approach in the alter periods but it might also be by chance, since we can already observe positive values in the pretest.

Now that I’ve reached a sample size of near 30 animals in each group, it was time to break the code to see which group was wich. To my surprise, the worst performing group in term,s of learning was the control group:

It is unusual for between-groups comparisons to become statistically significant at the 0.005 level with a sample size of less than 50, let alone 30, but these DopR2 knock-downs in ellipsoid body ring neurons are just a class of their own:

The DopR2 receptor knock-down not only performed exceedingly well in these leaning experiments, it was also the cross with the strongest optomotor response:

And also that difference is statistically significant:

The TNT-E flies had a slight positive preference, worse avoidance (esp. in the first training period) and flew really bad. One could say they did have some learning deficits, but it doesn’t look as if learning was completely abolished (which is roughly what Andreas had found before):

Andi’s results: