HONEY BEE BRAINS AND LAVENDER — Transcript

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1. 0:02[Music]
2. 0:09lavender has a powerful
3. 0:13scent but could its scent have even more
4. 0:16power than we
5. 0:17think Aroma therapies like lavender have
6. 0:20been around for a long time in how they
7. 0:22modify Stress and Anxiety in humans what
8. 0:25we've discovered in the honeybee is that
9. 0:27lavender similarly changes their
10. 0:29behavior their memories even their DNA
11. 0:31and these studies might be potentially
12. 0:33very useful in how we study the human
13. 0:36[Music]
14. 0:41brain at Monas University in Victoria
15. 0:44beekeeper William Quan cares for the
16. 0:47University's community of honey bees
17. 0:50what I find really interesting about
18. 0:51bees is as well as their importance for
19. 0:54food security and pollination of a third
20. 0:57of the food we eat there's a lot that we
21. 0:58can learn from the anatomy of the bee
22. 1:00they're very very social animals they
23. 1:03have you know tremendous vision and
24. 1:05their sense of off action is something
25. 1:07that has granted us many Tools in
26. 1:10understanding neurod development and
27. 1:11sensory
28. 1:13systems it's this keen old factory sense
29. 1:16the sense of smell that's made bees
30. 1:19perfect research subjects for professor
31. 1:21Charles
32. 1:23claudianos the B brain is particularly
33. 1:26interesting because although it's
34. 1:29anatomically different from a human
35. 1:31brain the fundamental mechanics of how
36. 1:33it works are
37. 1:35similar as a beekeeper I've picked up
38. 1:38that in regards to their sense of smell
39. 1:40they share a lot of similarities with us
40. 1:41in particular the things which are
41. 1:43Pleasant for us is generally Pleasant
42. 1:45for bees things like Rea roses and
43. 1:47lavender and the flowering
44. 1:50herbs lavender has been used in France
45. 1:54and in Europe for Generations as a
46. 1:56carative it's not only used as a
47. 1:58carative for bees but also cative in
48. 2:01terms of our pets and even ourselves so
49. 2:05clearly there's anecdotal evidence that
50. 2:07there's something you know compounds
51. 2:09like lavender which bees might actually
52. 2:12see as
53. 2:14beneficial but there's one scent bees
54. 2:17seem to hate bananas a lot of beekeepers
55. 2:21as a tip and trick to promote hygienic
56. 2:23behavior and cleaned up inside the hive
57. 2:25they usually put a banana pill in the
58. 2:27top of the hive and seal the liad and
59. 2:29the smell that the banana pill emits
60. 2:32usually stimulates them to clean the
61. 2:34hive a lot faster than it would without
62. 2:36these definitely do not like the smell
63. 2:38and they can be a bit more
64. 2:40aggressive we know that a compound which
65. 2:44is the banana smell ISO Amal acetate
66. 2:47actually is used as an alarm feromon in
67. 2:51bees we can use that information very
68. 2:53insightfully to look at how we look at
69. 2:56memory and learning and aggressive
70. 2:58response in honey bees in the
71. 3:02laboratory Professor claudianos decided
72. 3:05to find out what was going on inside the
73. 3:07be's brain when it smelled lavender
74. 3:10particularly what was happening in its
75. 3:12memory we can actually collect honey
76. 3:15bees between days 10 and 14 before they
77. 3:19actually gain an experience of the
78. 3:20environment and we put them into a
79. 3:22little device where just their heads
80. 3:25poking out and we start the classical
81. 3:28conditioning experiment
82. 3:32for each bee the scent of lavender is
83. 3:35blown gently across its antenna and
84. 3:38immediately after it's given a drink of
85. 3:40sugar water after just a few repetitions
86. 3:43the bees seem to learn to associate the
87. 3:45smell with the
88. 3:47reward if they have made that
89. 3:49Association the Beast sticks out its
90. 3:51tongue we call it prosus and we can go
91. 3:54back a day later and if we give it the
92. 3:56same smell it will put out its tongue as
93. 3:59a positive response that it has formed a
94. 4:01memory we've also seen that Association
95. 4:04as long as weeks later and considering
96. 4:07the be only lives for weeks or a couple
97. 4:09of months this is a significant part of
98. 4:11their
99. 4:12life but are the bee's reactions to the
100. 4:14scent of lavender just a learned
101. 4:16Association or do they have an innate
102. 4:19response to the scent by chance when we
103. 4:22were actually looking at memory and how
104. 4:25memories are formed in a be brain we did
105. 4:28see that there was a preference of
106. 4:29certain odors and it just so happened
107. 4:33that one of these compounds ended up
108. 4:36being the same compound which actually
109. 4:38modifies the aggressive response in the
110. 4:41beo to identify the particular compounds
111. 4:45which were modifying B Behavior Charles
112. 4:48and his group designed another
113. 4:51experiment the feather experiment you
114. 4:54can see it's a black feather and black
115. 4:56is the color that they respond to
116. 4:59adversely because they think it's a
117. 5:02threat when that spins and hits the bees
118. 5:05they get into an agitated State and they
119. 5:08start stinging behavior and you can see
120. 5:10here how one's raising its abdomen and
121. 5:13probably releasing this alarm pheromone
122. 5:16that banana smell isol Amal
123. 5:19acetate Charles isolated two specific
124. 5:22scent molecules that really did make
125. 5:24bees
126. 5:26Cala two fenel ethanol the key component
127. 5:29of
128. 5:30scent and linol a common floral scent
129. 5:34found in many varieties of plants
130. 5:36particularly
131. 5:37lavender they then replicated the
132. 5:40experiment in the
133. 5:42field and both the laboratory experiment
134. 5:45and the hive experiment in the field
135. 5:47proved to give the same results so these
136. 5:49two compounds really had a significant
137. 5:52effect on calming
138. 5:55bees after successfully linking scent to
139. 5:58both memory making and mood regulation
140. 6:00in bees professor claudianos and a team
141. 6:03of international collaborators turned
142. 6:05their attention to what those sents were
143. 6:08doing to the bees DNA in 2006 our group
144. 6:12was part of a large international team
145. 6:14which sequenced the honeybee genome and
146. 6:18after we got the data we actually
147. 6:20understood that the honeybee genome was
148. 6:22much smaller than other genomes which we
149. 6:25had analyzed
150. 6:27previously claudian his research
151. 6:30Partners had a theory that the old
152. 6:32factory cues triggered by sense like
153. 6:35lavender were directly linked to the
154. 6:37expression of certain be
155. 6:40genes people might think that the genome
156. 6:43really is only involved in how we
157. 6:45develop as an organism that's a
158. 6:48misconception The genome interacts with
159. 6:50the environment constantly and we now
160. 6:53know these processes actually involve
161. 6:56this science called epigenetics
162. 6:59when you think of DNA you think of the
163. 7:02classic double helix filled with genes
164. 7:05but not all of those genes are active
165. 7:07indeed some can be turned off
166. 7:10epigenetics is how genes are dynamically
167. 7:15being switched on and switched off as a
168. 7:17function of environment and it involves
169. 7:20certain chemical processes in particular
170. 7:24methylation in methylation environmental
171. 7:28influences caus cause certain molecules
172. 7:30methyl groups to attach to the DNA
173. 7:34effectively silencing particular genetic
174. 7:37expressions in this way different
175. 7:39genetic traits can be expressed in the
176. 7:42host using Cancer drugs designed to stop
177. 7:45the methylation process Charles and his
178. 7:48colleagues were able to see what the
179. 7:50bees could remember if they weren't able
180. 7:52to make epigenetic changes to their
181. 7:55DNA you take just a drop of these drugs
182. 7:59you put it just on the thorax or the
183. 8:01back of the bee and it will absorb it
184. 8:05then the bee is put into the same setup
185. 8:08in terms of the classical conditioning
186. 8:10memory learning approach and we found
187. 8:14that these methylation Inhibitors these
188. 8:16Cancer drugs actually significantly
189. 8:19affected long-term
190. 8:24memory amazingly Charles and his
191. 8:27research Partners discovered that found
192. 8:30it almost impossible to make long-term
193. 8:32memories if they were prevented from
194. 8:34making epigenetic changes to their
195. 8:37DNA could there be implications for
196. 8:40human mental
197. 8:41health bees are an exceptional model for
198. 8:44research because they have many
199. 8:46parallels to our own human development
200. 8:48so the implications to human health
201. 8:51there's a few we understand that where
202. 8:54you have a memory problem one of the
203. 8:56first things to go is your sense of
204. 8:58smell sensory acuity drops whether it's
205. 9:02Parkinson's or some forms of dementia so
206. 9:05we have great hopes that the research is
207. 9:08going to be able to translate into
208. 9:10practical uses and how we can actually
209. 9:13think about taking that data and
210. 9:15examining it in the context of mental
211. 9:17health
212. 9:18disorders but for now the next challenge
213. 9:22is to see what effect these sense have
214. 9:24on the human
215. 9:25brain what will happen as part of this
216. 9:28trial will we get a pre-scan of the
217. 9:31brain as a control and then we also have
218. 9:34a scan of a brain reacting to a visual
219. 9:38something which elicits aggression like
220. 9:40for instance a soldier holding a gun or
221. 9:43a clenched fist or a barking aggressive
222. 9:46dog then we will also pulse the odor and
223. 9:50look at what the response is in terms of
224. 9:53modifying the image
225. 9:56response although it's too early to know
226. 9:58what professor claudianos will find in
227. 10:00the human brain he expects the response
228. 10:03to scents like lavender to be very
229. 10:05similar to that of bees well like in the
230. 10:08honeybee we would expect to see changes
231. 10:11in the neurotransmitter systems that are
232. 10:14also present in the honeybee in terms of
233. 10:16reward where these odors work so looking
234. 10:20at a human brain seeing if we get the
235. 10:22same sort of response would be
236. 10:25confirming that these oders actually
237. 10:27work in the same way which be very very
238. 10:29very exciting
239. 10:32[Music]