Modulation of olfactory processing in the Drosophila larva

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Should I get that chocolate cake or rather go for the salad? Even though we know that too much sugar and fat is bad for us, we often make bad decisions when grocery shopping or ordering in a restaurant. This is especially the case when we had our last meal several hours ago. Hunger influences our internal state, thereby changing our decision-making towards accepting more risk with more caloric food. This phenomenon extends from humans to even simple invertebrates like insects. The fruit fly larva has simple goals: to eat, to grow, and to pupate. After food withdrawal, a starved larva behaves differently towards odor sources that represent food sources of different quality. Thus, the Drosophila larva is an accessible model system to study the modulation of olfactory behavior and food choice by internal state. We now have a unique genetic toolkit to dissect the underlying circuits as well as detailed information about the synaptic wiring diagram. Understanding how information about the internal state of the larva is integrated into sensory processing machinery of this accessible model will illuminate shared principles for understanding how we integrate sensory inputs and internal states to make everyday decisions.