Food Drive

When something sparks our interest, we react. But how do we know how to respond appropriately? External stimuli can be classified as ‘low- or high-activity’. For example a high-activity behaviour would be finding a mate, while eating food is low-activity. Scientists recently compared fruit flies exposed to such stimuli to see what controls their response. They looked at the brain chemical serotonin, an important neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood and reducing arousal. By labelling different types of serotonin-releasing brain cells different colours (pictured), each supplying specific parts of the fruit fly brain the team found that when one type released serotonin, the appeal of high-activity behaviours was reduced but low-activity behaviours weren’t affected. So rather than acting globally across the brain, it seems that serotonin is released by certain brain cells at opportune moments in order to selectively suppress high-activity behaviours, for example when it's dinner time.

Written by Gaëlle Coullon

Gaëlle Coullon

Writer

Gaëlle is a consultant and trainer in research communication and commercialisation. As an ex-neuroscientist, she is always looking for new ways to combine her love of writing with everything brain related.

• Image from work by Atefeh Pooryasin and André Fiala
• Georg-August-University Göttingen, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach-Institute for Zoology and Anthropology, Department of Molecular Neurobiology of Behavior, Göttingen, Germany
• Image copyright held by the authors
• Research published in The Journal of Neuroscience, September 2015