Early life experience with natural odors modifies olfactory behavior through an associative process

Abstract

Past work has shown that chronic exposure of Drosophila to intense monomolecular odors in early life leads to homeostatic adaptation of olfactory neural responses and behavioral habituation to the familiar odor. Here, we found that, in contrast, persistent exposure to natural odors in early life increases behavioral attraction selectively to familiar odors. Odor experience increases the attractiveness of natural odors that are innately attractive and decreases the aversiveness of natural odors that are innately aversive. These changes in olfactory behavior are unlikely to arise from changes in the sensitivity of olfactory neurons at the first stages of olfactory processing: odor-evoked output from antennal lobe projection neurons was unchanged by chronic exposure to natural odors in terms of olfactory sensitivity, relational distances between odors, or response dynamics. We reveal a requirement for additional features of the environment beyond the odor in establishing odor experience-dependent behavioral plasticity. Passive odor exposure in a featureless environment lacking strong reinforcing cues was insufficient to elicit changes in olfactory preference; however, the same odor exposure resulted in behavioral plasticity when food was present in the environment. Together, these results indicate that behavioral plasticity elicited by persistent exposure to natural odors in early life is mediated by an associative process. In addition, they highlight the importance of using naturalistic odor stimuli for investigating olfactory function.