What can flies teach us about brain diseases?

Abstract

Diseases that affect the brain are one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. Many doctors and scientists are trying to work out how these diseases arise and how they can be treated. Unfortunately, the brain is an extremely complicated organ, so this goal is very challenging. One way of simplifying this challenge is to look at simpler brains. For example, a human brain has about 100,000 times more brain cells than a fruit fly brain, but it works in a similar way. Although a fruit fly may seem very different from a human, we still have a lot in common. For example, we both have brains that control how we move our bodies. Scientists are using fruit fly brains to study a wide range of brain diseases that affect human patients. Fly brains can be used to understand how a disease happens, and they can even be used to test drugs to discover new medicines. This article gives an overview of how scientists are using flies to help understand and treat brain disorders.