Scientists complete most advanced brain map of an insect
Neuroscience researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge have achieved a significant breakthrough by completing the most advanced brain map to date, that of a fruit fly. The highly detailed diagram, also known as a connectome, traces every neural connection in the brain of a larval fruit fly, which is a widely studied scientific model with brains comparable to humans. This landmark achievement, supported by the US National Science Foundation, has the potential to underpin future brain research and inspire new machine learning architectures. The research appears in the journal Science and is led by senior author Joshua Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins. The connectome of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is the most complete and expansive map of an entire insect brain ever completed, encompassing 3,016 neurons and 548,000 connections between them. Vogelstein emphasized that this achievement is critical for understanding the mechanism of thought and knowing how neurons connect with each other.
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