Leonie Kirszenblat
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leoniek.bsky.social
Leonie Kirszenblat
@leoniek.bsky.social
48 followers 100 following 1 posts
Postdoc at RIKEN 🗾
Sleep, olfaction, genetics, neuroscience
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leoniek.bsky.social
New paper from the Kazama lab on the circuit computations underlying innate odor value!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Distinct circuit motifs evaluate opposing innate values of odors
Innate hedonic values of odors are computed in the Drosophila higher olfactory area, the lateral horn, where distinct neurons represent opposing values in a graded manner. Representations of negative ...
www.cell.com
September 21, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Reposted by Leonie Kirszenblat
plosbiology.org
The fly as a model for unravelling the mechanisms of #sleep regulation. @giorgio.gilest.ro explores a @plosbiology.org study which refines the key neuronal circuits involved in the regulation of sleep in fruit flies #Drosophila 🧪 Paper: plos.io/42uPczp Primer: plos.io/4iVHgxR
Dissecting dFB regulation of sleep in Drosophila. Left: The commonly used 23E10 GAL4 drives expression in the green cells located in the brain and the ventral nerve cord. Jones and colleagues have obtained a refined split-GAL4 line that limits expression in the brain cells only, excluding the peripheral VNC-SP cells. Top right: Optogenetic stimulation of the dFBsplit cells at frequencies higher than 10 Hz for 24 h leads to an increase in baseline sleep and promotes long-term memory consolidation. Chronic inactivation also paradoxically leads to an increase in baseline sleep and mildly affects sleep homeostasis. Bottom right: Optogenetics activation of cholinergic neurons also leads to an increase in baseline sleep, while inactivation leads to a decrease in sleep rebound but only in stronger regimes of thermogenetic silencing.
April 7, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Leonie Kirszenblat
sdissel.bsky.social
I am pleased to report that our paper on dFB neurons is available on Plos Biology. I am extremely grateful to Dave and Brandon, my grad students, Jen, our technician/lab manager and the many undergraduate students involved in this.

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
The dorsal fan-shaped body is a neurochemically heterogeneous sleep-regulating center in Drosophila
The role of the dorsal fan-shaped body in sleep regulation in Drosophila is contested. This study shows that cholinergic neurons in the dorsal fan-shaped body play a major role in sleep modulation in ...
journals.plos.org
March 27, 2025 at 2:14 PM