Morphofunctional experience-dependent plasticity in the honeybee brain.

Repeated or prolonged exposure to an odorant without any positive or negative reinforcement produces experience-dependent plasticity, which results in habituation and latent inhibition. In the honeybee (Apis mellifera), it has been demonstrated that, even if the absolute neural representation of an odor in the primary olfactory center, the antennal lobe (AL), is not changed by repeated presentations, its relative representation with respect to unfamiliar stimuli is modified. In particular, the representation of a stimulus composed of a 50:50 mixture of a familiar and a novel odorant becomes more similar to that of the novel stimulus after repeated stimulus preexposure. In a calcium-imaging study, we found that the same functional effect develops following prolonged odor exposure. By analyzing the brains of the animals subjected to this procedure, we found that such functional changes are accompanied by morphological changes in the AL (i.e., a decrease in volume in specific glomeruli). The AL glomeruli that exhibited structural plasticity also modified their functional responses to the three stimuli (familiar odor, novel odor, binary mixture). We suggest a model in which rebalancing inhibition within the AL glomeruli may be sufficient to elicit structural and functional correlates of experience-dependent plasticity.

Nudging COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake by Changing the Default: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: Although vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 is considered the central strategy against the pandemic, uptake lags behind target rates. METHOD: To explore whether this rate could be enhanced by a nudging strategy that exploits the status quo bias, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in northern Italy comparing vaccination acceptance among 2000 adults, ages 50 to 59 years, who were either invited to set an appointment (opt-in group) or assigned an individual appointment (opt-out group). RESULTS: Results indicate a difference of 3.2 percentage points, which represents a 32% relative increase in the vaccination rate for the opt-out group compared with the opt-in group. CONCLUSIONS: A significant portion of those who remain unvaccinated may not hold strong beliefs against vaccination but rather tend to inaction and may therefore be nudged toward vaccination with a reduction of action required. HIGHLIGHTS: Reluctant adults (50-59 years), who had not yet received vaccines against COVID-19, were sent letters announcing appointment availabilityIn an RCT, the status quo option in the notices influenced the rate of vaccine acceptanceNudging via pre-scheduled appointments encouraged vaccine uptake more than invitations to schedule didSwitching the default option yielded a 32% relative increase (13.1% vs. 9.9%) in vaccination.