A functional division of Drosophila sweet taste neurons that is value-based and task-specific

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2110158119
• Publication Date: 2022-01-14T21:10:12Z
• Authors: Hsueh-Ling Chen; Dorsa Motevalli; Ulrich Stern; Chung-Hui Yang
• Keywords: Sweetness

Significance Sweet taste neurons in both Drosophila and mice are often thought to be hardwired promote appetitive responses signal the presence of reward. Here, exploiting females’ robust rejection sucrose substrates over plain ones during egg-laying one specific context, we discovered that sweet can divided into at least two anatomically functionally distinct groups confer positive negative values, respectively, options egg-laying. This discovery reveals design feature system allows sweetness/sugars valued differently according context animals’ behavioral goal (i.e., feeding versus egg-laying), pointing a level flexibility sophistication is not seen system’s mammalian counterparts.