Recently, researchers have created a map of a fruit fly’s brain. It was done by the FlyWire project at Princeton University with the goal of learning more about all brains to protect humans from brain-related problems like Dementia by scanning one that was small and would therefore would be achievable with the current technology. The 3D map that was made in the end is called a connectome because instead of just showing where the neurons are located, it additionally records how they connect to others. The brain mapped had 139,255 neurons total and 50m connections among them. It took 12 years and about $40 million dollars to complete, they used two methods to achieve this.
The first hasn’t fully scanned the brain yet, it involved blasting a small beam of atoms into the tissue and then taking an image with an electron microscope. The second involved shaving off small layers and using a different type of microscope that sent a beam through its target rather than scanning it. The second method was recently finished and the 21m images taken were compiled by 622 researchers and 15 citizen scientist volunteers. Other labs have decided to work on mapping mouse brains but haven’t done much yet. (They have 500 times more neurons) Estimates for these larger brains say that they could have a full connectome within a decade if someone was willing to pay 1bn for it.
Although the technology has improved, a human connectome is still far off in the future as it has the very far of 86bn neurons.
RELATED STORIES:
https://www.wired.com/story/most-complete-brain-map-ever-is-here-a-flys-connectome/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03190-y
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0lw0nxw71po
TAKE ACTION:
