After 12 years of work, a huge team of researchers from the UK, US, and Germany have completed the largest and most complex brain map to date, describing every neural connection in the brain of a larval fruit fly.
Though nowhere near the size and complexity of a human brain, it still covers a respectable 548,000 connections between a total of 3,016 neurons.
The mapping identifies the different types of neurons and their pathways, including interactions between the two sides of the brain, and between the brain and ventral nerve cord. This brings scientists closer to understanding how the movements of signals from neuron to neuron lead to behavior and learning.
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