Nature

doi:10.1038/nature11614 Authors: Christopher J. Burke, Wolf Huetteroth, David Owald, Emmanuel Perisse, Michael J. Krashes, Gaurav Das, Daryl Gohl, Marion Silies, Sarah Certel & Scott Waddell

Dopamine is synonymous with reward and motivation in mammals. However, only recently has dopamine been linked to motivated behaviour and rewarding reinforcement in fruitflies. Instead, octopamine has historically been considered to be the signal for reward in insects. Here we show, using temporal control of neural function in Drosophila, that only short-term appetitive memory is reinforced by octopamine.