Neural substrates of salience: Implications in perception and cognition

Dopamine-releasing neurons in the fruit fly brain act as a traffic control system, tagging some experiences as important while letting others fade into the background. This research tackles a fundamental gap in neuroscience: we know dopamine is involved in learning, but not how it physically separates the *strength* of a memory from its *content*. In flies, some dopamine neurons assign positive or negative value (valence) to an experience, while others assign motivational salience—the signal that says “pay attention, this matters.” The team will use imaging and behavioural tests to map the exact circuits that control salience and how those circuits connect to the brain regions that trigger behaviour. This is fundamental science with no immediate clinical or commercial application. However, the same principles of dopamine signalling are conserved across species, including humans. Understanding how a simple brain separates memory strength from memory content could eventually illuminate why conditions such as addiction, Parkinson’s disease, or schizophrenia distort salience—making irrelevant stimuli feel urgent or important experiences feel flat. Past work in *Drosophila* has repeatedly uncovered neural mechanisms that later proved central to mammalian brain function.