The research team at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge, has announced success in mapping the entire Drosophila fruit fly brain, encompassing 140,000 neurons and 15 million synapse connections, enabling the identification of 8,452 brain cell types, a significant increase from the previous 3,643 types distinguished.
The brain mapping process involves slicing samples into 40 nanometer-thick sections and scanning them with an electron microscope. Subsequently, artificial intelligence is used to separate parts of the image into neurons and identify which cells they connect to. Verification of this data by both team scientists and volunteer scientists took approximately 33 years of work.
The fruit fly brain is the most complex animal brain to have been fully mapped, with the ability to walk, fly, navigate, produce sounds, and form memories.
In 2020, Google also released a similar fruit fly brain map, but it was much coarser in comparison, with sections just 20 microns thick, which amounts to 500 times less detailed than this research endeavor.
TLDR: The research team at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology successfully mapped the complex brain of the Drosophila fruit fly, identifying 140,000 neurons and 8,452 brain cell types in a process that took 33 years to complete.
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