Internal state dependent olfactory behavior

Animal exhibit distinct behavior that dependent their internal states even for the same sensory input. Drosophila larva responds different to odors when starved. Here, we investigate how food deprivation affects olfactory behavior in Drosophila larvae. We find that certain odors repel well-fed animals but attract food-deprived animals and that feeding state flexibly alters neural processing in the first olfactory center, the antennal lobe. We built a parsimonious Boolean network model that incorporates known connectivity property of the circuit to help elucidate how feedback from higher brain region in fly larvae can control context-dependent odor preference.

K. Vogt, D. Zimmerman, M. Schlichting, L. A. H. Nunez, S. Qin, K. Malacon, M. Rosbash, C. Pehlevan, A. Cardona, A. D. T. Samuel, “ Internal state configures olfactory behavior and early sensory processing in Drosophila larva”, Science advances 7(1), eabd6900 (2021).