First 'map' of adult brain created
October 5, 20242 Mins Read
Science and Application Desk: For the first time, scientists have created a complete map of an adult brain.

brain-map-nature

A 3D model of a fly neuron and 50 million connections between them has been created. This is the first time scientists have seen the entire brain of an adult animal that can walk and fly.

This is a huge improvement over previous efforts, the British daily Independent reported.

This could be the first step in similar research into larger brains, which scientists hope will eventually include human brains. The project could shed new light on fundamental questions about how the brain actually works.

The research already suggests that the brains of different animals may be more similar than previously thought. By comparing the newly mapped brain with previous smaller studies, the researchers found that the images were quite similar; And each brain is not an entirely unique structure, the report notes.

"To understand how the brain works, we need to understand mechanically how all the neurons connect together to make you think. In most brains, we have no idea how this network works." – said Gregory Jeffries of the University of Cambridge.

“Flies can do all kinds of complex things like walking, flying, navigating, and even the male flies sing to the girls. Brain wiring diagrams are the first step to understanding things that interest us, such as how we control movement, answer the telephone or recognize a friend.”

This map of the brain was created using the brain of a fly, which itself is less than a millimeter wide. It is cut into seven thousand pieces and then scanned. The researchers used AI to scan more than 100 terabytes of images and created a map of 140,000 neurons and 50 million connections between them.

In hopes of better understanding the whole brain, scientists have made the entire database open to other researchers. By understanding how a healthy brain works, we can better understand how the brain works in different situations, such as mental health problems.

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This map of the brain is described in two new studies, titled 'Neuronal Wiring Diagram of an Adult Brain' and 'Whole-Brain Annotation and Multi-Connectome Cell Typing of Drosophila', published in the journal Nature.