Abstract
The peptidergic dorsal paired medial (DPM) neurons, which innervate the mushroom bodies in
Drosophila, have been widely hypothesized to be part of the unconditioned stimulus (US) pathway of odor-shock classical conditioning. In the December 2 issue of
Cell, Yu et al., using functional imaging techniques, report the surprising finding that DPMs contain odor-specific memory traces and send integrated information about the conditioned stimulus (CS) to the mushroom bodies. These findings provide important new insight into the circuitry of learning in
Drosophila.