A research team from the French CNRS has studied how memory is formed in fruit flies, writes Infobae.
The study is published in Nature and is based on experiments involving smell and electrical stimuli.
The flies were trained to associate a specific scent with an unpleasant experience.
The researchers then measured how certain nerve cells responded during and after learning.
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They found that a particular type of neurons, called Gr43a, were active in more situations than expected, including during negative learning.
Altered response
Normally, these neurons respond only to sugar when the flies are hungry. However, after repeated learning sessions with breaks, this changed.
The flies showed a temporary state in which the neurons behaved as if they still lacked energy, even when they had eaten.
The researchers used genetic methods to switch off the neurons. When this was done after learning, long-term memory was not formed.
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Importance of diet
The experiments also showed that the type of food mattered. Only sugar or glucose led to stable memory, while fat did not have the same effect.
This suggests a close connection between nutrition and the brain’s ability to store memories.
Overall, the results indicate that sugar plays a crucial role in the formation of long-term memory under certain conditions.
At the same time, the researchers emphasize that the results apply only to fruit flies and need to be further investigated in other organisms.
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Sources: Infobae and Nature.