Abstract
Like other animals flies develop a state of learned helplessness in response to unescapable aversive events. To show this, two flies, one 'master', one 'yoked', are each confined to a dark, small chamber and exposed to the same sequence of mild electric shocks. Both receive these shocks when the master fly stops walking for more than a second. Behavior in the two animals is differently affected by the shocks. Yoked flies are transiently impaired in place learning and take longer than master flies to exit from the chamber towards light. After the treatment they walk more slowly and take fewer and shorter walking bouts. The low activity is attributed to the fly's experience that its escape response, an innate behavior to terminate the electric shocks, does not help anymore. Earlier studies using heat pulses instead of electric shocks had shown similar effects. This parallel supports the interpretation that it is the uncontrollability that induces the state.
Highlights
An animal may have established a behavioral response to cope with a recurrent dangerous or stressful event in the outside world
Flies were tested in a small box [11]. It closely resembled the heat box [4] except that the flies could be exposed to electric shocks instead of heat pulses
Whenever the master fly got shocked, the corresponding yoked fly got an electric shock of the same duration, independent of what it was doing at this moment
Summary
An animal may have established a behavioral response to cope with a recurrent dangerous or stressful event in the outside world. Byrne [2] put it: "The term learned helplessness is used to refer to any behavioral or physiological consequence of exposure to an aversive event that is produced not by the event itself but by the organism’s lack of behavioral control over the event." In flies (Drosophila melanogaster) learned helplessness was first observed by Brown et al [3] and later investigated in more detail by Yang et al [4] The latter authors used the so called heat box [5] in which they could expose single flies to a random sequence of heat pulses and measure their locomotor behavior. Flies out of control of the aversive events showed longer escape latencies, transiently impaired learning and low activity in walking
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