Neuron Mapping Adult Fly Brain – New Brain Map
New Google Map For Adult Fly Brain
Imagine entering a new city without a map. The streets are unknown, and every turn feels like a step into a new city. As Google Maps helps you find a way to get to a new city, our neuroscientists have worked hard to create something similar to that.
Yes, you heard correctly, “ Map of the Brain.” “Map is the place where reality meets imagination.”
Scientists have finally achieved a remarkable accomplishment: after 50 years of trying, they have produced the first map of the entire brain of an adult animal with eyes and legs, complete with sensational detail. The brain is no larger than a poppy seed, and yet it contains 139,255 neurons and 50 million connections.
The brain of an adult female fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). While this may seem tiny compared to the human brain, which contains 80 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections, but it’s a huge leap from where neuroscientists started in the 1960s.
“This is a major milestone,” says Princeton University neuroscientist Mala Murthy, who shares the Nature paper. “There’s no other complete brain map of an adult animal this complex.” So far, the most detailed map of a fruit fly brain contains a 3D diagram of the adult fly “hemibrain” but includes only around 20,000 neurons. According to Emory University biologist Anita Devineni, who commented on the work in Nature, the new, much more precise connectome was expected to revolutionize fruit fly neuroscience.
Mapping the animal brain has been a journey that began roughly half a century ago with less complex creatures like the legless and blind microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans. In 2002, the scientists behind this partial brain map of just 302 neurons were awarded with Nobel Prize. Then, it took more than ten years; today, it would take no more than thirty days with such advanced technology.
In 2023, researchers completed a much larger brain map, including all 3,016 neurons in the larva of a fruit fly. Still, for the adult fruit fly, the one that can see and walk and whose neural networks governing vision and complex movement are more similar to humans, there is a better outlook on the scientists’ work.
“Fruit flies can do complex behaviors like walking, flying, navigating and males even sing to females,” says Gregory Jefferis, another lead researcher from the University of Cambridge. “Mapping the brain is kind of the first step toward understanding how we control movement, recognize friends or answer the phone.”
This was a significant undertaking by researchers from 122 institutions, with major contributions from Princeton University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Vermont. Making this map required more than 7,000 slices of the fruit fly brain and 21 million data images, enough to fill 100 typical laptops.
To further study the dataset, the team consulted an artificial intelligence program developed at Princeton. The outcomes of the work are described in nine scientific papers comprising a complete annotation of the brain map. There were also crowdsourcing efforts made to correct any computer-generated errors through volunteers helping proofread neuron names and functions. It would take one person 33 years to complete all 3 million manual edits.
Of all 8,453 known and named cell types in the diagram, covering 96 percent of all neurons, more than 4,500 are new to science.
Just as Google Maps helps you find your way in a new city, neuroscientists have been hard at work creating something just as crucial: a map of the brain. “You wouldn’t want to drive to a new place without a map,” explains Sven Dorkenwald, a neuroscientist fresh out of Princeton’s Class of 2023. “What we’ve done is build an atlas of the brain, with detailed annotations marking every key feature. Now, researchers can explore with purpose as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the mind.”
A paper applies this neural map in practical terms; that is, when specific neurons have become activated within this fruit fly’s brain, it causes the fruit fly to do exactly what it would do in actual life, like extending its proboscis for sugar.
Fewer than twenty individuals have won Nobel Prizes for research with fruit flies. This newly released study may just endow us with the next Nobel Prize winner in this field.
Maps are essential; without a map, it is like building a house without outlining.
Now, you can visualize holding a detailed map of an entire brain in your hands, down to the very last neuron, an achievement groundbreaking that it could change the future of neuroscience. This is exactly what a team of scientists has accomplished with the brain of an adult fruit fly.
Neuron Mapping Adult Fly Brain – New Brain Map
