After training 14 flies it looks as if the new setup is working as it should:

Looking at the optomotor traces more closely now that (a) we know that motor neurons are the only site of plasticity and (b) we routinely record optomotor behavior after training, something very interesting appeared when comparing flies that have been trained on one turning direction with flies trained on the other side:

Flies trained to avoid right turning show reduced optomotor response to the right and vice versa! The weaker effect for ‘left’ may be due to the weaker learning in this group?

Anyway, I have never seen this and find it quite exciting!

Hello everyone!

Here is a brief overview of the topics I will be dealing with over the next few months:

This is the experiment by MD Ziv Williams I am trying to imitate ->

• Lamarckian inheritance following sensorimotor training and its neural basis in Drosophila – Williams, 2015

If you are further interested in transgenerational inheritance of behavioral traits and non synaptic memory storage check out these interesting links ->

• Can brain activity transmit transgenerationally? – Miska and Rechavi, 2021
• Is plasticity of synapses the mechanism of long-term memory storage? – Abraham, Jones and Glanzman, 2019

This week, for now, I will continue practicing to glue the flies and make a realistic estimate of the number of flies I need to get a significant result. Hopefully I can start trying out my experimental setup by the start of next week :)

The old software is installed with the new hardware and I’ll be testing the new software in parallel to experiments with the old software. Technically, everything seems to be working now, but the first six flies I tested did not show learning after training:

However, avoidance looks fairly ok, only the last training period gives away that something still isn’t quite the way it should be:

So I’ll go ahead and train a new batch of flies this week. I’ll focus on training/avoidance and make sure it is perfect, before I shorten the training.

MB417B -> α’/β’ap, α’/β’m, α/βs, α/βp
MB463B -> α’/β’ap
MB371B -> α/βp

If you missed it at the Göttingen NWG meeting, you can download our poster from here:

After the first full week of testing the three different fly lines with red light, we have analyzed the results. We are now able to provide a further update on our findings.

While the effect for the control groups seems to stay consistent with our previous findings, the effect for the positive control has weakened and is closer to the strength measured in previous experiments. We utilized the norpAP24;Gr28bd+TrpA1>Chrimson line for both our positive and negative controls.

Furthermore, the experimental group, which previously favored red light in the post-test, showed a more varied and inconclusive profile. We will need to conduct further testing to determine whether the previously observed effect was simply caused by the small sample size.

Another important discovery was the necessity of feeding the flies sugar water 5-10 minutes before the experiment in order to maintain their activity levels. This way the flies will be identified as a valid data point by the R-script and will ensure more and more accurate data. It is important to note that we will implement this feeding process in all future experiments to ensure consistency and accuracy of the data collected.