A large international research team led by groups at Harvard Medical School and Princeton University has reached a major neuroscience milestone by publishing a complete map of every connection between neurons in the central nervous system of an adult fruit fly.
The achievement gives scientists a new way to examine how the brain and body work together to produce complex actions, including walking and flying. It also opens the door to broader studies of the core rules that govern nervous systems.
"We can see all of the neurons and their connections as a complete unit for the first time and ask, 'What do we learn from that?'" said study co-senior author Rachel Wilson, the Joseph B. Martin Professor of Basic Research in the Field of Neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.
First Complete Fruit Fly Brain and Body Wiring Map
The new map of neural connections, known as a connectome, extends a previously published fruit fly brain connectome by adding the fly's spinal cord equivalent, called the nerve cord.
