University of Sussex Even the humble fruit fly craves a dose of the happy hormone, according to a new study from the University of Sussex which shows how they may use dopamine to learn in a similar manner to humans. Informatics experts at the University of Sussex have developed a new computational model that demonstrates a long sought after link between insect and mammalian learning, as detailed in a new paper published today in Nature Communications. Incorporating anatomical and functional data from recent experiments, Dr James Bennett and colleagues modelled how the anatomy and physiology of the fruit fly’s brain can support learning according to the reward prediction error (RPE) hypothesis.