Butterfly Brain

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Home to thousands of species of butterflies, the forests of central and South America are fluttering with color and pattern. Two of those species are Heliconius cydno and Heliconius melpomene. They’re closely related, but live in different microhabitats: Heliconius cydno lives deep in the forest, while Heliconius melpomene lives on its edges. Scientists think that studying their brains can help us understand how the brain is involved in speciation, or the formation of distinct species through evolution. Couto, A., Young, F. J., Atzeni, D, . . . Montgomery, S. H. (2023). Rapid expansion and visual specialisation of learning and memory centres in the brains of Heliconiini butterflies. Nature Communications 14, 4024. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39618-8 The researchers then placed the caterpillars at the bottom of a Y-shaped tube that had ethyl alcohol fumes in one arm and no scent in the other. 78% of the conditioned larvae crawled away from the scented arm and into the one with fresh air.

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An HD index >0 indicates that the neural tuning can better be explained by a correlation with the animal’s heading (putative HD & steering neurons, n = 55), while an HD index <0 indicates that neural tuning was unaffected by the animal’s heading (putative GD neurons, n = 58). In addition, we correlated the binned neural response (10-degree bin size) measured prior to sun displacement with the one measured after displacement. Resetting the internal goal direction through aversive conditioningcarmustine implants (glial wafers) – a new way of giving chemotherapy for some high-grade tumours, where implants are inserted into the brain ( read more about carmustine implant treatment on Cancer Research UK) A) Adult brain after dissection, showing the two optic lobes and the central brain ( B– F). Visualisation of the adult brain, immunostained with an antibody against synapsin, in different confocal sections from most anterior ( B) to most posterior ( F). ( B) Antennal lobes (AL). ( C) Accessory medulla (aMe), anterior optic tubercles (AOTu), and mushroom body lobes (MB-lb). ( D) Lamina (La), medulla (Me), the lobula (Lo), lobula plate (LoP), and the central body (CB). ( E) Mushroom body calyx (MB-ca). ( F) Protocerebral bridge (PB). Kahle, W., Frotscher, M., & Spitzer, G. (2003). Nervous system and sensory organs. New York: Thieme. The cerebellumlies between the cerebrum and the medulla of the brainstem. It plays an important role in regulating motor functions; participating in the planning and modulation of motor activity, including the coordination of the body while moving. The researchers think that these subtle differences in brain structures help keep the two butterfly lineages apart, contributing to their being two different species. It’s likely that the differences in brain structure impacts behavior such as foraging or mating, leading to divergent behaviors.

Butterfly Brains And Speciation | A Moment of Science

Butterfly mushroom bodies are typically composed of a visual and an audio region. Scientists were able to identify that, across all brains studied, the areas involved with vision showed the largest growth in brain evolution. After studying the butterflies’ brains under a powerful microscope, researchers found that structures in the brain crucial to visual processes such as color vision and shape and motion detection are between 13 and 27% larger in the brains of the species that lives deep in the forest than in the brains of the species that lives at the forests’ edges. The cerebrum makes up most of the brain. It is found in the cranial vault. The cerebrum consists of two cerebral hemispheres (left and right) and five lobes. All lobes(except one) are named according to the cranial bones on which they lean: frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital and insular lobes. The insular lobe is hidden just beneath the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. ‘Insula’ means island, which the insular lobe is indeed–an isle of gray matter hidden under the surface of the cerebrum. Soliman MA, Khan A, Azmy S, Gilbert O, Khan S, Goliber R, Szczecinski EJ, Durrani H, Burke S, Salem AA, Lubanska D, Ghannam MM, Hess RM, Lim J, Mullin JP, Davies JM, Pollina J, Snyder KV, Siddiqui AH, Levy EI, Plunkett RJ, Fenstermaker RA. Soliman MA, et al. Neurosurg Rev. 2022 Dec;45(6):3511-3521. doi: 10.1007/s10143-022-01864-7. Epub 2022 Sep 29. Neurosurg Rev. 2022. PMID: 36173528 Review.

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