Scientists have created a map that shows each nerve in the brain of the little fruit fly, and how those nerves are connected.
This incredible discovery help us to figure out the basic rules that control signals between our brains and help us learn or do things.
Scientists from the UK and US discovered a map of 3,016 neurons in the brain of a larva. It’s the most detailed connectome ever described. Professor Marta Zlatic, Professor Albert Cardona along with others published this amazing finding on March 10th 2023 in the Science journal.
Our body’s brain and nervous system is made up of cells called neurons. These neurons are connected to each other by special points, called synapses. At these contact points, information can be passed from one neuron to another with the help of chemicals. Professor Zlatic said this.
Scientists used to not know how the inside of a brain works until now. Before this, they only knew the structure of very few brains, like worms, tadpoles and larvae. They couldn’t really understand how a brain worked without looking at its parts. But now scientists can get a better idea of how the brain works and what it does.
Dr. Zlatic said that researchers haven’t developed the technology needed yet to map out all of the connections in larger animals like wolves and bears. But she did mention that they’re working on it.
All brains, no matter which species they belong to, have a lot of things in common: they are made up of connected nerves that allow them to process information, learn, choose actions and directions, search for food and recognize others. Just like certain genes are similar across species, I think the basic circuits used for these activities will also be alike.
Scientists wanted to learn more about the fruit fly larva’s brain, so they used a high-powered microscope to scan thousands of its slices. From the images they had, they created a map showing all of the 3016 neurons and their 548,000 connections or synapses. All this info was then carefully noted down.
Scientists found ways to figure out the routes that information travels in the brain of the insect, and they also discovered some patterns in those connections that were just like what scientists use for deep learning today. Dr. Zlatic said this was an amazing finding.
The main struggle of this project was recognizing and getting the meaning out of what we saw. We had a perplexing brain connection which was made up of lots of pieces. Me and some researchers from John Hopkins University, Professor Priebe and Professor Vogestein, invented computing techniques to get important information from the structure. By comparing the living organism’s system, it’ll be easier for us to make better artificial networks.
Jo Latimer, the leader in charge of brain science and mental health at the Medical Research Council, said something.
Scientists from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology have made a huge discovery! They detected every single neuron in an insect’s brain and figured out how each neuron is linked up with one another. With this new information, we now have a better understanding about how signals from neurons travel and affect behavior in people. Later on this could help us create therapies for conditions like diseases.
We will go deeper and study the brain of an insect to better understand how it learns and makes decisions. For more information on this, you can check out “First Complete Map of an Insect Brain”.
In March 2023, a new scientific study called “The connectome of an insect brain” was published in the journal Science. This paper involved a team of 17 different people: Michael Winding, Benjamin D. Pedigo, Christopher L. Barnes, Heather G. Patsolic, Youngser Park, Tom Kazimiers, Akira Fushiki, Ingrid V. Andrade, Avinash Khandelwal, Javier Valdes-Aleman, Feng Li, Nadine Randel, Elizabeth Barsotti , Ana Correia , Richard D. Fetter , Volker Hartenstein , Carey E. Priebe , Joshua T. Vogelstein , Albert Cardona and Marta Zlatic . The goal of this project was to better understand how insects think by looking at how their brains are connected (their “connectome”).
