{"id":25102,"date":"2023-03-09T20:00:25","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T19:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=138639"},"modified":"2023-03-09T20:35:16","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T19:35:16","slug":"neuroscientists-map-the-complete-circuitry-of-an-insect-brain-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/neuroscientists-map-the-complete-circuitry-of-an-insect-brain-for-the-first-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Neuroscientists map the complete circuitry of an insect brain for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The model shows every single neuron and its connections in the brain of a fruit fly larva. <\/p>

By Jason Goodyer\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 09 March 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Researchers at the University of Cambridge have pieced together a map showing every single neuron and how they\u2019re wired together in the brain of a fruit fly larva<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The map shows all 3,016 of the neurons in the larva\u2019s brain and the complex network of 548,000 synapses \u2013\u00a0 known as the connectome \u2013 that carry chemical signals between them. It is the biggest map of its kind ever produced.<\/p>\n

The team hope that the map will enable them to study how signals travel through the brain and affect learning and behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way the brain circuit is structured influences the computations the brain can do. But, up until this point, we\u2019ve not seen the structure of any brain except of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans<\/em>, the tadpole of a low chordate, and the larva of a marine annelid, all of which have several hundred neurons,\u201d said co-researcher Prof Marta Zlatic<\/a> of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means neuroscience has been mostly operating without circuit maps. Without knowing the structure of a brain, we\u2019re guessing on the way computations are implemented. But now, we can start gaining a mechanistic understanding of how the brain works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team produced the image by scanning thousands of slices of the larva\u2019s brain using a high-resolution electron microscope and painstakingly marking out the connections between the neurons.<\/p>\n

They now plan to delve deeper into the map to study the structures involved with specific functions such as learning and decision-making. Although the current technology isn\u2019t sophisticated enough to map out mammal brains, there is still much to learn from studying the larva brain, the researchers say.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll brains are similar \u2013 they are all networks of interconnected neurons \u2013 and all brains of all species have to perform many complex behaviours: they all need to process sensory information, learn, select actions, navigate their environments, choose food, recognise their conspecifics, escape from predators etc,\u201d said Zlatic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the same way that genes are conserved across the animal kingdom, I think that the basic circuit motifs that implement these fundamental behaviours will also be conserved.\u201d<\/p>\n