BBC Article on the Fly's Brain

 BBC Article on the Fly's Brain

The brain of a fly, smaller than the tip of a needle, has revealed secrets that have astonished scientists. These tiny creatures can walk, fly, and even male flies sing love songs to win over female flies, all thanks to a brain smaller than a needle’s point.

For the first time, scientists have mapped the shape, location, and even the remarkable 50 million "connections" within the fly's brain, which contains 130,000 cells. This is the most detailed scientific study of any adult insect's brain, and experts have hailed it as a major step in understanding the human brain. The lead researcher on this study of the fly's brain claims that this investigation will reveal more details about the thinking process.

Dr. Gregory Jefferis from Cambridge’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, affiliated with the Medical Research Council, told the BBC, “Currently, we don’t fully understand how the network of cells in our brains helps them communicate.”

“How do signals pass through the system that allows us to recognize faces, hear someone’s voice? The map of the fly’s brain is astonishing, and it will indeed help us understand the human brain,” he added.

In the human brain, cells are known as "neurons." It’s important to note that the number of neurons in the human brain far exceeds those in a fly's brain.

So, the key question is, how can the brain of a fly help scientists understand human thought processes?

The images from this study, published in the scientific journal Nature, show a bundle of wires that are beautiful but also incredibly complex.

But how does such a small organ perform such powerful computational tasks? The answer lies in the structure and shape of the fly's brain. Yet, building such a small and powerful computer is beyond modern science.

Dr. Mala Murthy from Princeton University, who was part of the research team, said that the image of this wiring, scientifically known as a "connectome," will be incredibly important for neuroscientists.

“It will help researchers who are trying to understand how a healthy brain functions. We hope that, in the future, it will be possible to compare what happens when something goes wrong in our brains,” Dr. Murthy added.

Dr. Lucia Prieto agrees with Dr. Murthy. She explained that researchers have previously completed the connections of the brains of two simple insects, one of which had 300 connections, and the other had 3,000. But mapping 130,000 connections is an extraordinary technical achievement that opens the path to discovering similar connections in the brains of larger animals, like mice, and perhaps in the human brain within a few decades.

Researchers were able to identify many individual circuits performing different tasks and show how they are connected. For instance, the circuits responsible for movement are located in the lower part of the brain, while those related to vision are found on the right and left sides of the brain, involving a larger number of neurons, as vision requires more computational power.

Although scientists already knew that circuits were separate, they were unaware of how these circuits communicated with each other.

Why is it so hard to swat a fly?

Some researchers are using these images to understand why it is so difficult to kill a fly. They discovered that when a fly is threatened by a newspaper or another object, the visual connections in its brain immediately send signals to its legs, causing it to fly away.

But more importantly, before this potential deadly attack, an even more powerful signal is sent to the legs facing away from the newspaper or weapon, telling them to jump. So, it can be said that the fly doesn’t even need to think to jump — it happens faster than the speed of thought.

This image was created by dissecting a fly's brain, during which around 70,000 slices were made, and each slice was photographed separately and later digitally assembled. The Princeton team then used artificial intelligence to analyze all the structures and neuron connections. Despite the AI assistance, the researchers encountered 3 million errors, which were manually corrected later. However, the work was still incomplete.

Dr. Philipp Schlegel says, "The map of the fly's brain was meaningless until the purpose of each connection was made clear." He added, "This data is like Google Maps, but in the case of the brain, finding connections between neurons is like discovering what is near each street or building."

"Describing a neuron is like writing the name of a street or town on a map, including details like the store's opening hours, phone numbers, and reviews. You need all of this information to fully benefit from it."

Any scientist can access the Fly Connectome to use it in their research.

Dr. Schlegel believes that "the world of neuroscience will witness new discoveries in the next few years thanks to this map."

The human brain is much larger than the fly's brain, and so far, scientists do not have the technology to map out all of its connections.

However, researchers believe that within thirty years, it may be possible to map the human connectome. This research was conducted through international collaboration under the name "Fly Worm Consortium." Courtesy of BBC.