Sleeping fruit flies will have their sense of smell hijacked to reveal which odour-detecting neurons act as the brain’s alarm system. Every animal must sleep to survive, yet sleep leaves them dangerously unaware of threats, food, or mates. How the brain balances deep rest with the need to stay alert to important cues is poorly understood. This project uses the fruit fly’s olfactory system—a tractable model for human sleep—to identify which scent-detecting neurons are wired to trigger waking, and whether they have special electrical properties or direct connections to arousal centres. The researcher will also test whether flies can learn to wake to new smells, and whether different fly species have evolved to wake to ecologically relevant odours. This is fundamental science. It will not produce a commercial product or medical treatment. But understanding how sensory systems maintain a “sentinel” function during sleep could eventually inform strategies for improving human sleep quality, designing better alarm systems, or even engineering artificial vigilance in autonomous systems. Past work on fruit fly olfaction has already revealed general principles of how brains process smell, showing how basic discoveries in simple animals can reshape neuroscience.
View original technical description
Sensory systems act as an interface between an organism and its environment, communicating relevant information to instruct appropriate behavioural outputs, such as locating food, a mate or evading danger. Remaining alert to cues present in the environment is therefore paramount to survival and is a need that prevails even during sleep. To benefit from the restorative properties of sleep, animals transition into an unconscious state which is characterised by a marked sensory disconnection from the world. This leaves them not only vulnerable but less able to respond to cues which may have a direct impact on their fitness. How do animals balance the need to sleep with other competing behavioural drives? One solution is to remain partially awake, which some animals achieve by sleeping one brain hemisphere at a time. Others, including humans and even fruit flies can rapidly wake up upon receiving salient information, implying that some sensory neurons may act as awake "sentinels". Using the fruit fly olfactory system as a sensory-arousal model, I will determine which olfactory pathways have a privileged role in waking and whether the neurons involved exhibit distinctive physiological properties or differentially connect to arousal centres. Secondly, I intend to investigate the plasticity of wake promoting pathways and ascertain whether learned as opposed to innate valence can be integrated into this circuit. Lastly, I will address whether the arousal system has evolved in closely related yet ecologically discrete fruit fly species. Fly chemosensory systems evolve rapidly and whether valence encoding during sleep has been translated appropriately across species borders, remains to be seen: Do different species wake to cues that are relevant to their ecology? This work promises to delve into an unexplored realm of sensory neuroscience and offer mechanistic explanations for a phenomenon that enables animals to benefit from sleep yet mitigate the challenges it poses.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know