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Within the optic lobes. the mushroom bodies or other parts of the insect brain, information is processed in an area-specific manner. To study the molecular basis of the abilities of the respective areas, the central nervous system of the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria was dissected into different parts, the optic lobes, the "midbrain", and the thoracic ganglia. Using a simple electrophoretic approach we were able to show area-specific expression of proteins exclusively present in the optic lobes. To study brain area-specific gene expression in more detail, we adapted the differential display polymerase chain reaction to the specific needs of this project. A number of differentially expressed amplicons were identified. The majority of them could be reamplified and their differential expression verified by northern blot analysis. To demonstrate the efficiency of the approach two amplicons with complementary expression patterns were further analysed.