in a science fiction movie the flya scientist accidentally transforms into a winged insect that ultimately destroys him. This week, a team of scientists compiled scientific articles about flies to find out more about how they originate. Drosophila melanogaster The brain works. This paves the way for a better understanding of how the human mind turns sensations into actions, processes thoughts, and, perhaps most mysteriously, stores experiences as memories.
Basics of publications nature — The culmination of more than a decade of research by a large international group of researchers — the study includes two key elements. “Parts list” It describes the names and functions of thousands of nerve cells. “Wiring diagram” Map how these parts are connected.
Seven additional papers explore how this data can be applied to learn more about how the fly brain works. Taken together, these studies provide the first complete and detailed look at the complex brain.
Mysterious signals from the fly brain
The essential question that neuroscientists addressed in this project was how the thousands of neurons in the fly brain (and ultimately the billions of neurons in the human brain) work together to process signals. The question is whether they will turn to action. “It’s just a basic mystery,” he says Davy Bockprofessor of neuroscience at the University of Vermont.
This is possible because the study went beyond simply counting and identifying neurons by type. This map also includes millions of synaptic connections. “Synaptic connections between neurons allow us to incorporate connectivity into the definition of types,” Bock says. “And it turns out to be very powerful.” How memories are stored and retrieved is perhaps neuroscience’s biggest black box. This detailed map may shed some light on this mystery.
“The human brain is made up of 100 billion neurons,” says Bock, one of the study’s lead authors. “By understanding about 100,000 animals, we get much closer to understanding ourselves.”
How the fly brain can help us understand the human brain
“Scaling up” from flies to humans seems like a quantum leap, but the data scientists have generated should provide a solid starting point. For example, many of the thousands of neuron types that humans and Drosophila share are similar. As a result of this research, many more named cell types with identified functions are now known. Drosophila than humans. Comparing unknown neurons in the human brain with known neurons in Drosophila should help fill that gap.
The same goes for how nerves and basic neural networks respond to basic stimuli like touch and smell. The group has already begun building computer models of such networks, which could be applied and eventually scaled up to humans.
“We found surprising convergence between the human brain and the fly brain,” Bock says. “For example, the olfactory systems are surprisingly similar,” Bock says.
read more: These fruit flies age faster after seeing death
Mapping neurons and brain function
Having both a map of the fly’s entire brain and the sum of its parts should give researchers a more sophisticated view of how such a system works. “If we want to understand how the brain works, we need to understand mechanistically how all the neurons work together to enable us to think.” Gregory Jefferis co-authors from the University of Cambridge in the UK said in a press release. “For most brains, we don’t know how these networks work. Now, without further ado, we have a complete wiring diagram, an important step in understanding complex brain function.” .”
Getting to this point has been a long and arduous process involving hundreds of scientists. In 2013, Bock and colleagues at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia removed a poppyseed-sized Drosophila brain, soaked it in resin to harden it, and carved the block into a large number of cells. It started with slicing it. Because it’s thinner than human air, each slice was photographed using a very high-resolution microscope.
That was the easy part. They repeated this process over a thousand times, creating millions of photos. The global team then began identifying the connections between each neuron and synapse individually. Finally, they used sophisticated computer software to map these parts into a three-dimensional map.
Bock says working on this project allows him to get to the heart of why he chose this field of study. “We walk around every day with about 100 billion neurons working together, and we take it for granted. But somehow it creates what we call life experience.” Bock says. “This is a deep mystery and one that attracts most neuroscientists to this field.”
Key statistics from fly brain research
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76 laboratories and 287 individuals
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7,050 brain slices
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21 million microscopic images
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139,255 neurons
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50 million chemical synapses
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8,453 cell types (currently, only 3,300 neuron cell types have been identified in the human brain)
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490 feet of neuronal “wiring”
read more: 5 of the world’s largest insects
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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul spent more than 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life sciences policy and global scientist career issues. He started his career in newspapers but switched to scientific magazines. His research has appeared in publications such as Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
