The first wiring map of an insect's brain hints at incredible complexity

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Scientists have created the first detailed wiring diagram of an insect brain. The brain, from a fruit fly larva, contained 3016 neurons connected by 548,000 synapses, the team reported Thursday in the journal Science.

But the challenges scientists faced in producing the fruit fly larva connectome show just how far they still have to go to map a human brain, which contains more than 80 billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synapses.Researchers have focused on connectomes because a brain is so much more than just a collection of neurons.

The brain of a fruit fly larva, like a human brain, has a right and left side. But when researchers mapped the connections in the insect brain,"one surprise [was] how similar the right and the left sides are," Vogelstein says. The team began by slicing a single tiny brain the size of a grain of salt into thousands of very thin sections.

Those tools are enough to trace millions of connections, Vogelstein explains, but not the trillions of connections found in a human brain. It took 12 days just to slice up that one tiny cube, which represents about only about one five-hundredth of a complete mouse brain, he says.

 

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NPR intern in charge of social media's contribution to Science?

Tfg? MTG?

Go Brady Go

Just look at Joe Biden for a human example

This is what beekeepers are really doing, farming copper wires.

The complexity of design is amazing! When you look at this incredible detail it just points you to the fact that there is a God who created it. When we see this we ought to honor Him as the mighty God He is, and come to Christ so we can be reconciled to Him.

There's a joke here involving the name of at least one political party, but I'm too sleep deprived to put the thing together. You get the idea.

Imagine how much more science will be able to do in a decade?

You got boebert now do mtg

Wiring map? I believe the technical term is schematic diagram.

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