Why does the heat make people feel inspirant?

A study of fruit flies revealed that brain circuits facilitate midday naps

During the hottest summer months, you may find yourself asleep

Human behavior is fully affected by temperature, including diet, activity levels, and sleep-wake cycles

Fruit flies are born to take

Marco Gario, associate professor of neurobiology at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, said: "Changes in temperature have a strong impact on both human and animal behavior and provide a clue to animals that it's time to adapt to the changing seasons

Gallio, the study's lead author, points out that fruit flies are particularly useful models for studying important questions such as "why do we sleep" and "what does sleep do to the brain" because they don't try to disrupt instincts like humans do, such as when

Cells that survive longer

The paper was the first to find an "absolute heat" receptor in the head of a drosophila that responds

As they expected from the results of a previous paper on cryogenicity, the researchers found that brain neurons that receive information about heat are part

The study was facilitated by a 10-year program that produced the first complete animal (fruit fly) neural connectivity map, called the connectivity group

Gallio argues that different circuits at hot and cold temperatures make sense because "hot and cold temperatures can have very different effects on physiology and behavior," he said

Next step

Next, Gario's team hopes to identify common goals for cold and hot circuits and discover how they affect sleep

"We found a neuron that may be an integrated site for the effects of hot and cold temperatures on drosophila sleep and activity," said

Gallio added that the team is interested in studying the long-term effects of temperature on behavior and physiology to understand the effects of global warming and to study species' adaptability