Memory of optical wood ants is identical to that of human brains

Tariq Kabil

Researchers conducted a classic conditioning experiment using wood ants, an insect famous for optical navigation, and found that the reinforcement given to the right sensor horn causes short-term memories, while the reinforcement granted to the left sensor horn causes long-term memories.

In their study published in the journal Proceedings of the British Royal Society: Biological Sciences (Proceedings of Royal Society B) May 6, the researchers stated that if these different types of memory are already stored on different aspects of the ant's brain, then This indicates that the lateral allocation of memory may have evolved several times in the distant past.

Wood ants Wood
ants are a type of ants family, exceeding six millimeters in length, and building nests at the base of coniferous trees within colonies that may contain more than three hundred thousand ant.

The wood ant nest consists of a maze of rooms and tunnels under the surface of the earth, feeding on seeds and invertebrate animals, spreading in Europe, and settling in forests and forests.

Although we believe that the human brain is private and superior, but even the smallest minds on Earth - like the mind of a wood ant - sometimes show remarkable similarities in our brains.

The new research suggests that wood ants store short and long-term memories on different sides of their brains, and when they store visual memories in their brains, they break the rules of symmetry.

It seems that one side of his brain stores short-term memories, while the other side retains them for a longer period. This is known as the nervous side direction, and it appears to be closely related to the formation of memories in animals.

The first display of
visual memory is a type of memory that describes the relationship between visual perception, mental storage, and the ability to retrieve stored scenes, and lead to the formation of mental images in the mind, and can be retrieved again within cognitive and mental systems associated with mental memory.

In human brains, for example, spatial memory and musical processing are mainly limited to the right side, while language is mostly on the left side, although there is a lot of communication and intersection between the two sides, and the same may apply to wood ants.

"To our knowledge, this is the first symptom of forming a visual side memory in an insect, with broad implications for our understanding of visual memories in insects and the development of lateral allocation in memory formation," the researchers wrote.

Sugar reward for
reaching these results The researchers offered a blue body, and wood ants were allowed to touch a drop of sugar with two sensing pods before tasting it, and they were trained to respond to the visual signal, then this association was tested after ten minutes, an hour and a whole day.

Like the famous Pavlov's dog experience, in which it was found that the dog was drooling whenever he hit the bell without providing food to the dog.

Finally, when the ants were trained using only the right sensor horn, they thirsted in ten minutes with gradually weakening effect over time.

On the other hand, trained ants using the left sensing horn showed no response in ten minutes or even an hour, but showed strong signs of thirst after a day.

The researchers wrote, "We make it clear that the short contact between the sugar reward and the left or right sensing horn is sufficient to produce a surrounding memory, although the visual signal is visible to the ants throughout the training and testing time."

Brain functions
for a while, scientists believed that we are the only type that carries two distinct halves in our heads, each specializing in different functions and behaviors.

Now, we know better that the inconsistency of the brain’s functions spreads between vertebrates, and it appeared very early in their development, and that may also apply to invertebrates.

Without knowing more about the insect breeds it is difficult to say if the lateral positioning of memory has independently developed in ants and social bees, and whether it is present in other types of insects.