Adaptivity and learning have in recent decades become a common concern of scientific disciplines. These issues have arisen in mathematics, physics, biology, informatics, economics, and other fields more or less simultaneously. The aim of this publication is the interdisciplinary discourse on the phenomenon of learning and adaptivity. Different perspectives are presented and compared to find fruitful concepts for the disciplines involved. The authors select problems showing representative traits concerning the frame up, the methods and the achievements rather than to present extended overviews.

Understanding how memories are induced and maintained is one of the major outstanding questions in modern neuroscience. This is difficult to address in the mammalian brain due to its enormous complexity, and invertebrates offer major advantages for learning and memory studies because of their relative simplicity. Many important discoveries made in invertebrates have been found to be generally applicable to higher organisms, and the overarching theme of the proposed will be to integrate information from different levels of neural organization to help generate a complete account of learning and memory.

Edited by two leaders in the field, "Invertebrate Learning and Memory "will offer a current and comprehensive review, with chapters authored by experts in each topic. The volume will take a multidisciplinary approach, exploring behavioral, cellular, genetic, molecular, and computational investigations of memory. Coverage will include comparative cognition at the behavioral and mechanistic level, developments in concepts and methodologies that will underlie future advancements, and mechanistic examples from the most important vertebrate systems (nematodes, molluscs, and insects). Neuroscience researchers and graduate students with an interest in the neural control of cognitive behavior will benefit, as will as will those in the field of invertebrate learning.
Presents an overview of invertebrate studies at the molecular / cellular / neural levels and correlates findings to mammalian behavioral investigationsLinking multidisciplinary approaches allows for full understanding of how molecular changes in neurons and circuits underpin behavioral plasticityEdited work with chapters authored by leaders in the field around the globe - the broadest, most expert coverage availableComprehensive coverage synthesizes widely dispersed research, serving as one-stop shopping for comparative learning and memory researchers

At the beginning of the century, Karl von Frisch inaugurated the experimental analysis of bee behavior with his studies on form and color vision. Since then, experimental analysis of bee behavior has been extended to their orientation in space and time, sensory capabilities, and communication within a social group. How does a creature with a brain volume of scarcely one cubic millimeter generate such varied and complex behavior? This volume represents the latest research on the behavior and neurobiology of bees. Topics include: dance communication, foraging and search behavior, decision making, color vision, learning and memory, structure and function of brain neurons, immunocytological characterization of neuropils and identified neurons,and neuropharmacological studies of stereotyped and learned behavior. Together these papers illustrate the challenge that bee behavior presents to the neuroethologist as well as the progress that this field has made in recent years in the tradition of von Frisch's pioneering work.