Neuroscience: Tantalized Flies Are Primed for Satiety

Ahmed, Osama M.; Murthy, Mala

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.09.029

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…This circuitry clearly demonstrates the important interplay between VNC and brain in regulating motor behaviors. The dopaminergic neurons that stimulate P1 neurons are themselves negatively regulated by copulation-induced feedback inputs ascending from the VNC ( Ahmed and Murthy, 2019 ; Lee and Wu, 2020 ). Thus, brain and VNC act together in a simple feedforward and feedback circuit to control sex drive.…”

Section: Do Insects Possess the Neural Architecture Necessary For Pain?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Design Principles for Subjective Experience: Implications for Insects

Key

Zalucki

Brown

2021

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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How subjective experience is realized in nervous systems remains one of the great challenges in the natural sciences. An answer to this question should resolve debate about which animals are capable of subjective experience. We contend that subjective experience of sensory stimuli is dependent on the brain’s awareness of its internal neural processing of these stimuli. This premise is supported by empirical evidence demonstrating that disruption to either processing streams or awareness states perturb subjective experience. Given that the brain must predict the nature of sensory stimuli, we reason that conscious awareness is itself dependent on predictions generated by hierarchically organized forward models of the organism’s internal sensory processing. The operation of these forward models requires a specialized neural architecture and hence any nervous system lacking this architecture is unable to subjectively experience sensory stimuli. This approach removes difficulties associated with extrapolations from behavioral and brain homologies typically employed in addressing whether an animal can feel. Using nociception as a model sensation, we show here that the Drosophila brain lacks the required internal neural connectivity to implement the computations required of hierarchical forward models. Consequently, we conclude that Drosophila, and those insects with similar neuroanatomy, do not subjectively experience noxious stimuli and therefore cannot feel pain.

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Section: Do Insects Possess the Neural Architecture Necessary For Pain?mentioning

confidence: 99%