Mapping these connections is the first step. With over 140,000 neurons and 54 million synapses—the connections between nerve cells—packed into such a tiny space, the fruit fly’s brain, however rudimentary compared to ours, is highly complex.
This week, in a tour de force, hundreds of scientists from the FlyWire consortium published the first complete map of an adult female fruit fly’s brain. A project roughly a decade in the making, the wiring diagram will be a rich scientific resource for years to come. The same techniques used to make the map—which heavily relied on artificial intelligence—could be used to chart more complex brains, such as zebrafish, mice, and perhaps even humans.