An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
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An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
1–10 of 208 posts
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#2Datahoarder question but can I download the map of the fly?
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#3It was my understanding that all this connectome-based research was largely a deadend, because it doesnt capture dynamics, nor a vast array of interactions. if you've ever seen neurones being grown (go search YT), you'll see it's a massive gelatinous structure which is highly plastic and highly dynamic. Even in the simplest brains (eg., of elgans), you get 10^x exponential growth in number of neurones and their connections as it grows.
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#4It was my understanding that all this connectome-based research was largely a deadend, because it doesnt capture dynamics, nor a vast array of interactions. if you've ever seen neurones being grown (go search YT), you'll see it's a massive gelatinous structure which is highly plastic and highly dynamic. Even in the simplest brains (eg., of elgans), you get 10^x exponential growth in number of neurones and their conne…
This is done agaist an adult so all the neurons have already grown.
connectome isn't a dead end but it doesn't solve all known problems. It's like making a static map which you can then use to inspect all those cars driving around (the dynamics) and crashing (the interactions).
[edit: I forgot to mention that neuron growth in adults (across many species) is still a controversial topic; see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554932/ for some commentary on the challenge in fly; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_neurogenesis for commentary on the larger problem ]
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#5What does it mean "mapped". Does it mean we know what each nerve/axon does?
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#6Datahoarder question but can I download the map of the fly?
I think that releasing the map on torrent would be a useful idea as well. This fly could end up like the lobsters in Accelerando. In that book the mapped animal is lobsters and they get first mover advantage on some post-scarcity type things. Getting them to the Internet would be a good first step, IMO.
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#7It was my understanding that all this connectome-based research was largely a deadend, because it doesnt capture dynamics, nor a vast array of interactions. if you've ever seen neurones being grown (go search YT), you'll see it's a massive gelatinous structure which is highly plastic and highly dynamic. Even in the simplest brains (eg., of elgans), you get 10^x exponential growth in number of neurones and their conne…
Giving scientists access to the connectome snapshot alone is very exciting. The first step to understanding why something is and how it came to be is seeing what it is.
There are systems at play that form the brain into what it is and we don’t know much about them. The individual neurons — we have a better understanding of, but not the emergent systems. Now that many more scientists will know what the target for these systems is — what is the brain they shape, we can start to understand the control and feedback loops that result in this snapshot state of the brain.
And that’s why it’s not a dead end. Just because it doesn’t immediately give some sort of a consumer product, doesn’t mean it’s not a step forward.
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#8Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#9What does it mean "mapped". Does it mean we know what each nerve/axon does?
It's my (layman) understanding that it's more or less a wiring diagram. Synapse #8217492 connects neuron #27472 and neuron #27865. It's a graph with 140,000 nodes (neurons) and 54.5 million edges (synapses). And then some labels for them like neurotransmitter type, which class of brain operations they're associated with, its size and position in 3D, etc.
They have a cool website that lets you browse the data: https://codex.flywire.ai/
Re: An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped
#10Datahoarder question but can I download the map of the fly?
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