A Research team led by Prof. Ann-Shyn Chiang, the Director of the Brain Research Center at NTHU, established a map of brain auditory neural network of fruit flies (Drosophila Melanogaster). They have discovered that the higher level auditory center of fruit flies is situated in the IVLP (inferior ventrolateral protocerebelum). This discovery helps researchers to further their understanding of the process of how animals integrate information gathered from different senses, and respond with appropriate action. The team published their new discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America on January 31^st, 2012.

According to Prof. Chiang, this particular research project took approximately five years to complete and get published. He also indicated that many scientists have attempted to understand how animal gather and integrate information with all their senses and respond with suitable behavior, such as to fight or to flight, or to mate. Because of the fact that fruit flies have genetic similarity to mammals, and we have a set of complete tools to manipulate gene regulation, thus, we can use the insects to research multisensory integrating and try to discover how mammals process their sensory information.

Based on that premise, Prof. Chiang further explained, the priority should be to understand single sensory nervous system's mechanism and its route of information transmission. Cooperating with Dr. Barry Dickson of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Austria, the Brain Research Center's team is building the brain nerve cell driver expression database of fruit fly. Such database will, in turn, allow researchers to control the activity and gene expression of a section of neurons or a single neuron, and further understand the inter-relationships among gene, nerve and behavior.

This important publication was co-authored by two of Prof. Chiang's doctoral students, Mr. Jason Sih-Yu Lai and Mr. Shih-Jie. Lo. They used the driver expression database and the PaGFP (activated green fluorescent RNA tracking techniques) to find out that the majority of the second level neurons inside of fruit fly's brain is consisting of AMMC-B1 neurons and the third level is consisting of IVLP-VLP neurons. By using in-vivo functional imagine technique, Mr. Lai and Mr. Lo were able to observe the reaction of the second and third levels of auditory neurons in the brains of fruit flies under different frequencies of stimulation, which lead to the discovery of route through which auditory information of the brain was transmitted.

According to Mr. Jason Sih-Yu Lai, the fruit flies use their wings to generate a sound of specific frequency before mating. And, the reason why the auditory system is so important for fruit flies stems from the fact that the different types of fruit flies generate different frequencies which allow them to decide if a particular fruit fly is the right mate. While there have been many researches conducted on the molecular mechanism of fruit fly's auditory organs (antenna), our knowledge on how fruit flies process their auditory information with their brains is still very limited. Furthermore, Mr. Lai also indicated that the senses of hearing, sight, smell and taste all play important roles in mating process for fruit flies. Thus, how they integrate all these different information to decide whether to mate is the next question scientists need to answer. This newly published article can provide partial answer to how mammals hear, and how they integrate information collected by various sensing organs.