Scientists uncover the role of dopamine in mediating short-term and long-term memory dynamics
Originally published by Tejasri Gururaj , Medical Xpress, on August 26, 2024 Neural activity gives information about how fruit flies respond to various sensory stimuli, revealing insights into how they process and encode these experiences into short-term and long-term memories. Credit: Cheng Huang. Fly image credit: https://prints.sciencesource.com/featured/6-fruit-fly-drosophila-melanogaster-oliver-meckes-eye-of-science.html . In a recent study published in Nature , researchers from Stanford University and Yale University have explored the interplay between short-term and long-term memory in animals. Learning and memory in insects are controlled by a structure known as the mushroom body, analogous to the hippocampus in mammals . While previous studies have explored this in insects, the researchers wanted to understand how pre-existing, innate responses to stimuli influence learning new associations and how these memories are formed and maintained over time . Medical Xpress