Authors
Naoko Toshima, Arman Behrad, Franziska Behnke, Gauri Kaushik, Alice Weiglein, Martin Strauch, Juliane Thoener, Oliver Kobler, Maia Lisandra M Wang, Ayaka Fukushima, Markus Dörr, Michael Schleyer
Published in
eLife. Volume 14. Oct 16, 2026. Epub Oct 16, 2026.
Abstract
Two evolutionary highly conserved functions of dopamine are to carry 'teaching' signals during associative learning and to control movement. In mammals and humans, these functions are generally thought to be produced by different populations of neurons. Here, we investigated in the larva of Drosophila melanogaster whether both these functions can be induced by the same individual dopaminergic neurons in the central brain. Focusing on the dopaminergic neurons of the DL1 cluster, we asked whether the optogenetic activation of individual neurons established associative punishment and/or safety memories, controlled the retrieval of the established memories, and acutely modulated locomotion. We found that each neuron had a unique yet overlapping set of behavioural effects. Several individual neurons both established a memory and modulated acute locomotion by increasing the animals' bending and decreasing their velocity. Our results demonstrate that individual dopaminergic neurons can fulfil a surprisingly broad range of functions in different behavioural contexts. Given the highly conserved roles of the dopaminergic system across the animal kingdom, this study raises the question whether a similarly diverse functionality can be found also in other animals, including humans.
PMID:
42885570
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 16 Oct 2026.
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