Habituated animals retain a latent capacity for robust engagement with familiar stimuli. In most instances, the ability to override habituation is best explained by postulating that habituation arises from the potentiation of inhibitory inputs onto stimulus-encoding assemblies and that habituation override occurs through disinhibition. Previous work has shown that inhibitory plasticity contributes to specific forms of olfactory and gustatory habituation in Drosophila . Here, we analyze how exposure to a novel stimulus causes override of gustatory (proboscis extension reflex; PER) habituation. While brief sucrose contact with tarsal hairs causes naive Drosophila to extend their proboscis, persistent exposure reduces PER to subsequent sucrose stimuli. We show that in so habituated animals, either brief exposure of the proboscis to yeast or direct thermogenetic activation of sensory neurons restores PER response to tarsal sucrose stimulation. Similar override of PER habituation can also be induced by brief th...