"Studying insect behavior? Make yourself an ethoscope! Mini robotic labs for testing fly behavior could accelerate neuroscience research."

Mairead Cain

Mr. Ippolito

A.P. Biology

19 October 2017

PLOS. "Studying insect behavior? Make yourself an ethoscope! Mini robotic labs for testing fly behavior could accelerate neuroscience research." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 October 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171019143037.htm>.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171019143037.htm

For my current event report, I decided to read and analyze the article, “Studying insect behavior? Make yourself an ethoscope! Mini robotic labs for testing fly behavior could accelerate neuroscience research,” from the online news source Science Daily.

The article discusses the invention and useage of the ethoscope, “a cheap, easy-to-use and self-made customisable piece of equipment...that can be used to study flies' behavior.” Researchers Dr. Giorgio Gilestro from Imperial College London and several other colleagues of his were largely responsible for the recent attention these devices have gained. Ethoscopes are made by combining a 3D printed base frame with a Raspberry Pi computer and camera. The ethoscopes are used by neuroscientists to study and detect a fly's behavior and movement course. Researchers are now free from manual observation of the flies, in which they would watch videos and monitor the movement. Ethoscopes are also able to manipulate the flies under research. "We can programme the machine [the ethoscope] to send stimuli to the flies only when they behave in a certain way. For example, the robots can be programmed to give flies rewards only if they complete a learned task," said Dr Gilestro. This scientific tool could soon be further developed to use on small animals.

Considering the fact that this article describes the invention of a tool used to study the behavioral patterns of flies, it is evident that this invention will have a large impact on the future of neuroscience. In the article itself, it is described how the ethoscope will make research on flies much easier and straightforward for the researchers involved. “Studies on fly activity usually involve researchers watching video recordings and manually scoring each fly's movements; ethoscopes can do this automatically, saving researchers time.” Future prototypes of the device could even study different, more complex, behavioral patterns, other than movement. One day, the ethoscope may even be advanced to monitor other creatures, other than flies. Dr. Gilestro described the fact that "The ethoscope is going to provide neuroscientists with a very new powerful tool to study, for instance, the biology of learning and memory or the function of sleep."

Overall, I believe the article “Studying insect behavior? Make yourself an ethoscope! Mini robotic labs for testing fly behavior could accelerate neuroscience research,” was very well written and equally informative. The authors easily simplify the advanced science behind the robotics described to help readers easily understand the information at hand. Many of the terms used are also defined and described. The authors go into amazing description when they discuss how ethoscopes could affect the future world of neuroscience. In an effort to improve the article, the authors should have discussed how, exactly, ethoscopes are set up in a research setting. The article was rather unclear with the description of the ethoscopes. It would have also been beneficial for the authors to include more quotes surrounding the use of ethoscopes and their future progression in the field of neuroscience.