Visualization of naive and learned odor representations using in vivo calcium imaging and immunohistochemical bouton mapping of single Drosophila mushroom body neurons

Abstract

This protocol enables the quantification of odor-evoked calcium activity in mushroom body Kenyon cells of the Drosophila melanogaster brain at the single bouton level. We also present subsequent characterization of naive and learned odor representations in the context of olfactory coding. This approach to analyzing the neuronal basis of associative learning provides a substrate for similar studies, perhaps in other animals, to probe the attributes of a neuronal memory trace at the level of synapses distributed across neurons. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Bilz et al. (2020).