Post by Harvard Medical School

Fruit flies moving through virtual reality are providing clues to understanding problems in more complex brains. 🪰 PhD student Pablo Reimers studies the head direction system, the internal compass that unpins a fly’s sense of direction, in the lab of Harvard Medical School Professor Rachel Wilson. The research is done with a fruit fly rig: a setup consisting of a microscope, cameras, and various metal implements surrounding a fruit-fly-sized virtual reality system. Most lab members have their own rigs tailored to their specific projects related to navigation. Wilson says it’s becoming increasingly clear that sense of direction in insects and mammals has the same basic organization. The principles of navigation her lab is uncovering in fruit flies may be directly relevant to various mammal species. In humans, problems with spatial navigation and body sensing can be an early sign of certain neurodegenerative disorders, and so any insight from fruit flies may prove valuable in helping clinicians to understand what goes wrong when patients lose their sense of space.

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