Brain complexity varies across many orders of magnitude between animals, and it is often assumed that complexity underpins cognition. It is thus important to explore the cognitive capacity of widely used model organisms such as Drosophila. We systematically investigated the fly's ability to learn discriminations involving compound olfactory stimuli associated with shock. Flies could distinguish binary mixtures (AB+ CD-), including overlapping mixtures (AB+ BC-). They could learn positive patterning (AB+A- B-) but could not learn negative patterning (A+ B+ AB-) or solve a biconditional discrimination task (AB+ CD+ AC- BD-). Learning about the elements of a compound (AB+) was not affected by prior conditioning of one of the elements (A+ AB+): flies do not exhibit blocking in this task. We compare these results with the predictions from simulation of several well-known theoretical models of learning, and find none are fully consistent with the overall pattern of observed behaviour.
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机译：动物之间的大脑复杂度在多个数量级上变化，通常认为复杂性是认知的基础。因此，重要的是探索广泛使用的模型生物（如果蝇）的认知能力。我们系统地研究了苍蝇学习与休克相关的复合嗅觉刺激的能力。苍蝇可以区分二元混合物（AB + CD-），包括重叠混合物（AB + BC-）。他们可以学习正模式（AB + A- B-），但不能学习负模式（A + B + AB-）或解决双条件区分任务（AB + CD + AC- BD-）。对化合物（AB +）元素的了解不受元素（A + AB +）中一种元素的预先调节的影响：果蝇在此任务中未表现出阻滞作用。我们将这些结果与几种著名的学习理论模型的仿真预测进行了比较，发现没有一个与观察到的行为的整体模式完全一致。
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