You will be presented with the full text of a biomedical research paper. Please write an abstract for this paper. Your response should include the abstract and no additional text.

Paper text:
to control the thermal landscape , we developed an array of sixty - four 1 inch - square individually addressable thermoelectric modules arranged in an 88 grid ( fig .
this array forms the floor of our test arena and is covered with black masking tape . to confine flies to this surface , a 3 mm high , 8 inch diameter heated aluminum ring
was placed around the outer perimeter of the arena and covered with a glass disk coated with a slippery surface .
visual cues were provided by an led display positioned around the outer perimeter of the arena ( fig .
the experimental protocol included 10 training trials ( 5 minutes each ) followed by a probe trial ( trial 11 ) where the visual display was relocated in the absence of a cool spot .
the navigational behavior of the flies during a session was tracked off - line using ctrax . at the end of the experiment
, flies were tested in the same arena for thermal preference and optomotor behavior to confirm normal thermal and visual responses .
the ability of insects to learn and navigate to specific locations in the environment has fascinated naturalists for decades . 
 while the impressive navigation abilities of ants , bees , wasps , and other insects clearly demonstrate that insects are capable of visual place learning14 , little is known about the underlying neural circuits that mediate these behaviors . 
 drosophila melanogaster is a powerful model organism for dissecting the neural circuitry underlying complex behaviors , from sensory perception to learning and memory . 
 flies can identify and remember visual features such as size , color , and contour orientation5 , 6 . 
 however , the extent to which they use vision to recall specific locations remains unclear . 
 here we describe a visual place - learning platform and demonstrate that drosophila are capable of forming and retaining visual place memories to guide selective navigation . by targeted genetic silencing of small subsets of cells in the drosophila brain 
 we show that neurons in the ellipsoid body , but not in the mushroom bodies , are necessary for visual place learning . together , these studies reveal distinct neuroanatomical substrates for spatial versus non - spatial learning , and substantiate drosophila as a powerful model for the study of spatial memories .