Shamik DasGupta, Clara Howcroft Ferreira, Gero Miesenböck

Science 23 May 2014: Vol. 344 no. 6186 pp. 901-904 DOI: 10.1126/science.1252114

Flies, like humans, deliberate before making perceptual judgments: They ponder difficult decisions longer than they do easy ones. DasGupta et al. measured reaction times in flies choosing between different smells. Mutations in a particular gene, they found, could cause indecision. Mutations in the same gene are implicated in intellectual disability, learning deficits, and language impairment