Abstract
Drosophila is a well-known vehicle for researchers to investigate the brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and autism. Currently, due to the sensing technologies, most of the existing experiments only allow flies moving in single-dimension (tube) or two-dimension (arena). However, the flies have the native behavior of moving in 3D space. Therefore, this study establishes a bio-sphere Drosophila test platform to realize a natural like testing environment. This study presents a novel “multi-function bio-sphere Drosophila test platform” implemented by Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) and flexible electronics technology. The bio-sphere is consisted of a transparent rigid acrylic sphere covered with a transparent flexible MEMS bio-film with embedded micro transducers. The transparent bio-film can sense fly’s position, and stimulate flies by giving electric shock and heat. The multi-function bio-sphere test platform provides a natural like testing environment (sphere space) for fly’s behavior observation, and the future potential of automatic training and recording.