Model performance in differential olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension reflex.

<p>A) Firing rates of the LHN response to a rewarded odour A (CS+) and unrewarded odour B (CS-) during three stages of the PER task; pre-training, training, and test. The red and blue points show responses of the LHN to the CS+ and CS-, respectively. Synaptic strengths between antennal lobe projection neurons to the LHN are modified only during the training (white area). Conditioning the model with CS+ induces increased firing rate in LHN during training. B) Responses of LHN to both CS+ and CS- before and after the conditioning for two different models, one with the structured connectivity and the other with random connectivity within the antennal lobe. The red and blue bars represent the LHN activity for CS+ and CS-, respectively. Standard error (SE) bars were calculated from the LHN’s firing rate for 50 different odours and different initial parameters in the differential conditioning. Bees were able to learn to discriminate significantly between rewarded stimuli and unrewarded stimuli (p-value < 10⁻⁶) while bees with random connectivity between local neurons and projection neurons cannot distinguish the CS+ (p-value = 0.29).