The tiny brain of flies can bring great benefits to humans.

Before beating one of the troublesome flies that appear at longer days and rising temperatures, we should think carefully. Through the study of Drosophila (a kind of fruit fly), a University of Missouri researcher found that, by controlling the concentration of some compounds related to the blood vessels of the brain, the genes have a key role. Pegs with memory can be isolated and checked.

The results of the study could benefit people who are suffering from Parkison's disease and could eventually lead to the discovery of a cure for depression.'The human health link here is that it can affect our understanding of cognitive decline in Parkison's disease and human depression', Troy Zars - assistant professor of biological biology University of Science and Arts - said.

The idea is that animals have a system that can connect memory quality to its meaning. If the event makes sense, the memories and surrounding details become stronger, longer and easier to recall than normal events and not much meaning. The difficulty that the research focuses on is the grasp of the mechanism that it forms.

Encoded images show serotonin clusters in the brain of drosophila, a fruit fly (Photo: University of Missouri)

'We have developed a plan to know how this relationship appears, from which we can repeat the action multiple times. It allows us to answer the question: 'What gene is it', 'How does it work', 'How does it interact with other proteins'. We can find completely new and completely unexpected things ' Zars said.

The main goal of neuroscience is to explore and study the brain's memory formation structure. Zars said he works with Drosophila because they are species with a well-established gene system, and have a less complex brain than mice or humans (250,000 neurons compared to 100 billion neurons), and have a number of habits. big activity.

Memory in flies is tested using a dedicated room that can fly freely. This room is equipped with hot devices. When flies move to a certain side, the whole room quickly heats up to an uncomfortable temperature. Finally, the flies learn, or remember, ways to avoid that side if the cerebrovascular vessels work normally. However, changes in some flies alter the levels of serotonin and dopamine, resulting in reduced memory capacity.

'This research is quite important because discovering a simple brain helps us to basically understand the complex nervous system,' Zars explains. Zars's work was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.