Fruit flies think before they make decisions, according to Oxford neuroscientists.
The researchers, working at the university-based Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, trained the flies to avoid one out of two concentrations of an odour placed at either end of a small chamber. The flies then had to decide which end that was.
According to the research, published in the journal Science, when the difference in the two odours was smaller, the flies made up for this by “gathering information for longer”.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Shamik DasGupta, told Cherwell, “The time for flies to make a decision to choose an odour depends on the difficulty of the task.” These times varied from 1.5 seconds for the easier tasks and up to 3 seconds for the more difficult ones. He also explained that they, “walk inside the chamber as the chambers are too small to allow flying”.
Moreover, the researchers discovered that fruit flies with a mutation in a gene called FoxP had reduced “speed and accuracy” in making decisions. It effectively slowed down how long it took the flies to reach a state where they were ready to make a decision. Significantly, said Dr. DasGupta, “Some mutations in human FoxP homologues results in cognitive defects”, suggesting that the research could provide insight into the human brain.
According to Dr. DasGupta, “Some mechanistic aspects of decision making are possibly conserved between flies and humans”. Additionally, the same model used by the neurosci- entists to map how fruit flies make decisions, “Has successfully been used to explain human decision making.”
