Brain maps

[Midsmartin]

This sort of thing is amazing. We've had a map of the 300 neurons in the worm C Elegans for some years, which people have used to start working out how circuits in their brain works and makes decisions.

But now a group has spent 18 months mapping the positions and connections of all the neurons in the brain of a fruit fly larva. They can trace connections within and between brain areas, identify different neural network "designs", different cell types etc. It's astonishing to me that you can do this!

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00709-7

It only has 3000 neurons (it's only a larva. All it needs to do is move, eat, avoid getting too hot or dry) but 544,000 synapses connecting them.

Original paper here
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 6.full.pdf