Why scientists just mapped every synapse in a fly brain
Diagram of the network of neurons in an insect brain. Johns Hopkins University & University of Cambridge hide caption
To really understand the human brain, scientists say you'd have to map its wiring. The only problem: there are more than 100 trillion different connections to find, trace and characterize.
But a team of scientists has made a big stride toward this goal, a complete wiring diagram of a teeny, tiny brain.
The brain of the fruit fly larva is a lot simpler than a human's, with about 500,000 connections to map. But it's still a major step up from the best-mapped model organisms so far, such as the roundworm and the larval sea squirt.
With a full map, or connectome, of the larval fruit fly brain, scientists can start to understand how behaviors shape, and are shaped by, the specific wiring of neural circuits.
Whole brain reconstruction of an insect brain.
"There's regions that correspond to decision making, there's regions that correspond to learning, there's regions that correspond to navigation. And so lessons that we learn about foundational issues such as how decisions are made, and how learning happens, we hope that they're general principles that will apply not just to the larval drosophila brain but also, essentially every other brain," says Joshua Vogelstein, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of the new study, published in the journal Science.
On today's episode, our resident neuroscience aficionado, NPR science correspondent Jon Hamilton, talks over the new findings with Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong, and explains why we big-brained humans ought to care.
Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
This episode was produced by Berly McCoy, edited by Gabriel Spitzer and fact checked by Anil Oza. The audio engineer was Gilly Moon.