FRANCE: When recalling memories, some individuals can remember items incorrectly. Tiny, buzzing little insects known as bumblebees can be unreliable witnesses too, according to a new study published in the journal Current Biology – the first to explore false memories in any non-human animals.
“We discovered that the memory traces for two stimuli can merge, such that features acquired in distinct bouts of training are combined in the animal’s mind. As a result, stimuli that have actually never been viewed before, but are a combination of the features presented in training, are chosen during memory recall,” said Dr Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London, who is a co-author on the study.
Dr Chittka and his colleague, Dr Kathryn Hunt, trained bumblebees to expect a reward when visiting a solid yellow artificial flower followed by one with black-and-white rings or vice versa.
During subsequent tests, bumblebees were given a choice between three types of flowers. Two were the yellow and the black-and-white types they’d seen before. The third type of flower had yellow-and-white rings, representing a mixed-up version of the other two. Minutes after the training, they showed a clear preference for the flower that most recently rewarded them. Their short-term memory for the flowers was good.
One or three days later, however, something very different happened when the bumblebees’ memory was put to the test.
Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology
WASHINGTON: Electric carmaker Tesla announced Sunday it was upgrading its Autopilot software to use more advanced radar technology. In a...
