Inducing Sleep by Remote Control Facilitates Memory Consolidation in <i>Drosophila</i>

TLDR

Sleep is believed to play an important role in memory consolidation. The authors induced sleep on demand by expressing the temperature‑gated channel UAS‑TrpA1 in neurons, including those projecting to the dorsal fan‑shaped body, and raising the temperature to 31 °C. Inducing 4 h of sleep after massed courtship conditioning, which normally fails to produce long‑term memory, enabled flies to form long‑term memory, whereas activating the dorsal fan‑shaped body without sleep did not.

Abstract

Sleep is believed to play an important role in memory consolidation. We induced sleep on demand by expressing the temperature-gated nonspecific cation channel Transient receptor potential cation channel (UAS-TrpA1) in neurons, including those with projections to the dorsal fan-shaped body (FB). When the temperature was raised to 31°C, flies entered a quiescent state that meets the criteria for identifying sleep. When sleep was induced for 4 hours after a massed-training protocol for courtship conditioning that is not capable of inducing long-term memory (LTM) by itself, flies develop an LTM. Activating the dorsal FB in the absence of sleep did not result in the formation of LTM after massed training.