Fly brain sheds light on human thought process

They can walk, hover and the males can even sing love songs to woo mates – all this with a brain that’s tinier than a pinhead.

Now for the first time scientists researching the brain of a fly have identified the position, shape and connections of every single one of its 130,000 cells and 50 million connections.

It’s the most detailed analysis of the brain of an adult animal ever produced.

One leading brain specialist independent of the new research described the breakthrough as a “huge leap” in our understanding of our own brains.

One of the research leaders said it would shed new light into “the mechanism of thought”.

Dr Gregory Jefferis, of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge told BBC News that currently we have no idea how the network of brain cells in each of our heads enables us to interact with each other and the world around us.

“What are the connections? How do the signals flow through the system that can let us process the information to recognise your face, that lets you hear my voice and turn these words into electrical signals?

“The mapping of the fly brain is really remarkable and will help us get a real grasp of how our own brains work.”

We have a million times as many brain cells, or neurons, than the fruit fly which was studied. So how can the wiring diagram of an insect brain help scientists learn how we think?

The images the scientists have produced, which have been to guide their research. Dr Schlegel believes that the world of neuroscience will see “an avalanche of discoveries in the next couple of years” thanks to this new map.

A human brain is so much larger than the fly’s, and we don’t yet have the technology to capture all the information about its wiring.

But the researchers believe that perhaps in 30 years it may be possible to have a human connectome. The fly brain, they say, is a start of a new, deeper understanding of how our own minds work.

The research has been conducted by a large international collaboration of scientists, called the FlyWire Consortium.