The Effect of Spaced Retention Learning in C. elegans

The behavioral movement of C. elegans was assessed after pairing two opposing stimuli during a training protocol. Blue light naturally drives C. elegans to move forward, while mechanosensory stimulation drives C. elegans to inherently move backward. Previously, it was found that when these two stimuli were paired, this led to a novel pausing response up to ten minutes after training (Pribec, 2022). To increase memory retention for one hour, the training protocol was increased to include three blocks of training. There seemed to be different responses to the twenty-minute and one-hour retention groups, which may suggest a pausing response closer to one minute, but a habituation response in the one-hour retention group. Further analysis of behavior is needed to form any conclusions about behavior in relation to the spaced retention of learning.