Drosophila Acquires a Long-Lasting Body-Size Memory from Visual Feedback

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Animal Behavior
• Sensory Processing

Background:

• Accurate perception of body size and limb reach is crucial for navigating the environment.
• While humans continuously update their sense of personal space, insects must learn their body size post-metamorphosis.
• Drosophila body size can vary, necessitating a mechanism for size estimation and memory.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how fruit flies (Drosophila) learn and memorize their body size.
• To understand the role of visual feedback in acquiring knowledge of body size.
• To identify the neural mechanisms underlying long-term memory consolidation for body size.

Main Methods:

• Studying naive (dark-reared) flies' decisions to cross gaps relative to their body size.
• Training flies in a striped arena to manipulate their size perception.
• Investigating the role of specific neurons in the central complex and dCREB2 transcriptional activity.

Main Results:

• Naive flies overestimate their size and learn it from visual parallax during locomotion.
• A consolidated memory of body size, once formed, appears to be lifelong.
• Memory consolidation is sensitive to stress in the initial hours post-training and has a retrieval delay.

Conclusions:

• Fruit flies acquire and retain a long-term memory of their body size through visual learning.
• Specific neurons in the protocerebral bridge, dependent on dCREB2, are essential for this memory.
• This study reveals insights into the neural basis of spatial memory and body self-representation in insects.