Scientists in a breakthrough neurological study mapped the entire brain of an adult fruit fly.
According to ABC, FlyWire Consortium, a large international collaboration of scientists worked together in the milestone research that could provide insights into the brains of animals and humans too.
A study published in the Journal Nature detailed over 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons or brain nerve cells in insects.
The research aimed to decode the workings of the brain and how functions in a healthy brain work.
Sebastian Seung, co-head of the study, said, “You might be asking why we should care about the brain of a fruit fly. My simple answer is that if we can truly understand how any brain functions, it's bound to tell us something about all brains.”
Moreover, researchers mapped hemispheres, behavioural circuits, chemical connections, a full set of cell classes, and different types of neurons in less than one millimetre-wide brain of Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly.
One of the authors of the study, Mala Murthy, explained, “One of the major questions we're addressing is how the wiring in the brain, its neurons and connections, can give rise to animal behaviour.”
The researcher noted, “Flies are an important model system for neurosciences. Their brains solve many of the same problems we do... They're capable of sophisticated behaviours like the execution of walking and flying, learning and memory behaviours, navigation, feeding, and even social interactions, which is a behaviour that we studied in my lab at Princeton.”
To note, the map prepared by the researchers provides a clear picture of the wiring diagram of the adult fruit fly brain, known as the connectome.
