2022/09/03 by Chris Rohlfs, Rohlfs, Chris
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · #FOS: Biological sciences #Insect Utilization and Effects #Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior #Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC) #q-bio.NC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2209.01497
arxiv created 2022/09/03 · openalex publication_date 2022/09/03 · arxiv updated 2022/09/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article provides a background and descriptive analysis of insect memory and the coding of olfactory sensation in Drosophila, presenting graphs and summary statistics from a large dataset of neurons and synapses that was recently made publicly available and also discussing findings from the existing empirical literature. Some general principles from Drosophila olfaction are discussed as they apply to the design of analogous systems in artificial neural networks: (1) the networks used for coding are shallow; (2) the level of connectedness varies widely across neurons in the same layer; (3) much communication is between neurons in the same layer; (4) in most olfactory learning, the manner in which sensory inputs are represented in stored memory is largely fixed, and the learning process involves developing positive or negative associations with existing categories of inputs.