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Article: To learn without sleep, fruit flies need a proper dose of dopamine: finding suggests pills could someday replace naps.(Body & Brain)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- August 30, 2008
- Author:
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To boost their brain power, dumb flies (and perhaps people) may need a little more shut-eye--or a shot of dopamine.
Fruit flies need sleep in order to learn, a study in the Aug. 5 Current Biology shows. Keeping Drosophila up for hours after their normal bedtime impairs the flies' ability to learn a complex task.
But activating a particular molecule sensitive to the chemical messenger dopamine in a brain structure called the mushroom bodies erases the learning deficits, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis find.
The study raises the possibility that learning is impaired not because sleep sneaks up on us when we should be paying ...