ABOVE: Male fruit flies kept in constant darkness forget that their attempted courtship was rejected.
© ISTOCK.COM, KeongDaGreat
The paper
S. Inami et al., “Environmental light is required for maintenance of long-term memory in Drosophila,” J Neurosci, 40:1427–39, 2020.
As Earth rotates around its axis, the organisms that inhabit its surface are exposed to daily cycles of darkness and light. In animals, light has a powerful influence on sleep, hormone release, and metabolism. Work by Takaomi Sakai, a neuroscientist at Tokyo Metropolitan University, and his team suggests that light may also be crucial for forming and maintaining long-term memories.
The puzzle of how memories persist in the brain has long been of interest to Sakai. Researchers had previously demonstrated, in both rodents and flies, that the production of new proteins is necessary for maintaining long-term memories, but Sakai wondered how this process persisted over several days given cells’ molecular turnover. Maybe, he ...
