Why did scientists spend years mapping the brains of these creatures?

“Brenner realized that to understand the nervous system, you have to know its structure,” said Scott Emmons, a neurologist and geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Create a new neural network C. elegans. This applies throughout biology. The structure is very important.”

Burner dkk their history paper, which was recorded at 340 pages, in 1986.

But the modern field of neural connections didn’t take off until the 2000s, when advances in imaging and computing finally made it possible to identify connections in the larger brain. In recent years, research teams around the world have begun to collect neural networks of zebrafish, songbirds, mice, humans, and more.

When the Janelia Research Campus opened in 2006, Gerald Rubin, its founding director, set his sights on fruit flies. “I don’t want to offend fellow worms, but I think the fly is the simplest brain that actually performs interesting and complex behaviors,” said Dr. Rubin.

Several different teams at Janelia started the aviation communications network project in the following years, but the work that produced the new paper began in 2014, with The brain of a female fruit fly is five days old.

The researchers sliced ​​fly brains into plates and then used a technique known as focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy to image them, layer by layer. The microscope essentially works as a very small and very precise nail file, removing very thin layers of the brain, taking pictures of the exposed tissue and then repeating the process until nothing remains.

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