How Understanding Fruit Fly Brains Can Help Us Understand Our Own

Fruit flies, source: Alamy

Imagine attempting to find your way around a strange city without your smartphone. You are lacking a map. Also, the street signs are written in another language. Neuroscientists view the study of the brain in this way.

The trillions of links formed by billions of neurons in the human brain create a complex network of pathways that shape our identity. A neural pathway is a network of connected neurons that sends signals between different areas of the brain. These pathways influence our thoughts, memories, and interactions with others. Currently, technology does not allow neuroscientists to map even a small fraction of the brain’s connections. We do not have a map.

A major breakthrough has been achieved through a worldwide partnership of researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Cambridge, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. The most complex brain we have mapped so far belongs to an insect. It has two hemispheres, a brainstem-like structure, and a spinal cord analog that manages the animal’s muscles, making its brain similar to the human brain in several ways.

Understanding this brain may give us many clues about how the human brain works

Only a few brain maps, or connectomes, are now available. The ones that do exist are for basic organisms with a small number of neurons, such worms or sea squirts.

Brain mapping requires expensive tools, such as potent electron microscopes that can scan the minuscule synapses between neurons, each of which is around 10 billionths of a meter in length. Neurons connect at synapses, which serve as communication hubs. It takes years to recreate neuronal pathways, synapses, and neurons, even in basic brains.

Now scientists have mapped a fruit fly larva brain with 3,016 neurons and more than half a million synaptic sites. These insects are surprisingly complex. Fruit fly larvae can feel pain, form good and bad memories, and work in a team with their neighbors to forage for food.

The first thing learned was that there are four different ways in which fruit fly neurons can communicate with one another.

Neurotransmitters, or chemical messengers, were thought to be the primary means by which neurons interacted with one another. These chemicals were sent from one neuron’s axon to the other’s dendrite. Appendages called dendrites are used by cells to communicate with one another. This was only accurate for 50% of the connections in the brain of the fruit fly larva, though. Fruit fly neurons occasionally transmit information from axon to axon, dendrite to dendrite, or dendrite to axon.

These linkages were recognized to exist, but little was known about them or how often they were. The team was astounded by their enormous number, which constituted about half of the connections in the brain. These made it possible for neurons to communicate with one another in novel ways, such as by merging various connection types simultaneously.

It is challenging to imagine the brain as a single mass of interconnected neurons due to the enormous number of neurons. In order to make things simpler, neuroscientists group together “cell types” that are comparable. Each neuron in the brain has a distinct form and function, sort of like a fingerprint. Yet, there is disagreement on how to categorize these cell types.

The team discovered a novel method for reducing the complexity of brain structure to its most basic level utilizing only the connections between neurons. 93 distinct cell types were discovered in the fruit fly larval brain. Each of these groups had neurons with comparable structures and functions in the brain, such as receiving visual information from the eye.

They then gave more attention to the cerebral cortex. A tracking algorithm for brain signals was created. Scientists once believed that distinct neurons were devoted to distinct senses, and that these impulses came together until later. But, using their approach, they found that the majority of neurons multitask, taking on several functions based on the specific sensory stimuli the fruit fly larva is receiving. Rare were the neurons that could only process one sensory signal.

AI and fruit fly brains – one and the same

Astonishing similarities between artificial intelligence and the fruit fly larval brain were found (AI). The brain’s pathways were layered on top of one another, much like ResNets (artificial neural networks that help deep networks learn tasks more effectively), giving it additional computing capacity. Loops were present along several brain circuits. This was especially evident in the learning and memory center, which may have acted as a recurrent neural network (artificial neural networks with looping connections).

But even primitive brains are capable of doing several jobs effectively, but AI is only capable of doing one activity well. In addition, brains are significantly more energy-efficient than AI. The energy necessary to manufacture and drive five cars for 120,000 miles would be needed by AI to solve the same question if a brain needs the energy to power a lightbulb.

With innovations like ChatGPT, AI is becoming more prevalent. Technology is consuming more and more energy, which could make the current climate catastrophe worse. To minimize AI’s energy impact, it will be crucial to understand how brains can solve complicated issues.

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