How female fruit flies know when to say ‘yes’

A fundamental question in neurobiology is how animals, including humans, make decisions. A new study publishing in the open access journal PLOS Biology on October 7 reveals how fruit fly females make a very important decision: to either accept or reject male courtship. This decision appears to be generated by a very small number of excitatory neurons that use acetylcholine as their neurotransmitter located in three brain regions. This study provides the framework to understand how decisions are generated and suggests that a decision is reached because that option is literally the most exciting.

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