We already know that the brain is one of the most complex and fascinating parts of an organism. Now, a team of researchers from the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia and with the help of Google and its powerful calculation computers, have created the most accurate 3D map of the fruit fly brain that shows thousands upon thousands of neurons connected between Yes.
Creating this complicated 3D map has taken more than two years of work. The map indicates millions of connections between 25,000 neurons and anyone can consult the data and the tools necessary to use them, since everything has been published freely.
Each shape on the screen represents part of a neuron in the fruit fly. The goal: to describe each of the approximately 100,000 neurons in the fly's brain, and to pinpoint the millions of places they connect. Such a wiring diagram, or connectome , reveals the complete circuitry of different areas of the brain and how they are linked.
The map, therefore, is not complete. Right now it covers about a third of the fly's brain, by volume, but its impact on science is incredible. It has become the largest and most detailed map of the fly brain ever completed.
