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Message: <blockquote data-quote="imhotep" data-source="post: 28674440" data-attributes="member: 562115">Charting a larval fruit fly’s nerve cells and their connections took 12 years...The wiring of one insect’s brain no longer contains much uncharted territory.[ATTACH=full]199518[/ATTACH]All of the nerve cells — and virtually every connection between them — in a larval fruit fly brain have now been mapped and it’s the most complex whole brain wiring diagram yet created. Previously, just three organisms — a sea squirt and two types of worm — had their brain circuitry fully diagrammed to this resolution. But the brains of those creatures have only a few hundred neurons. The scientists who conducted the new study wanted to understand much more complicated brains.Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) share a wide range of behaviors with humans, including integrating sensory information and learning. Larvae perform nearly all the same actions as adult flies — except for some, like flying and mating — but have smaller brains, making data collection much faster.The researchers identified more than 3,000 neurons and about 550,000 connections, known as synapses.[MEDIA=youtube]ZJFVHKZ-NLM[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

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