Mapping A Fruit Fly’s Brain With Crowdsourced Research

October 15, 2024 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

Example of a graph representation of one identified network with connections coded by neurotransmitter types. (Credit: Amy Sterling, Murthy and Seung Labs, Princeton University)

Compared to the human brain, a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) brain is positively miniscule, not only in sheer volume, but also with a mere 140,000 or so neurons and 50 million synapses. Despite this relative simplicity, figuring out how the brain of such a tiny fly works is still an ongoing process. Recently a big leap forward was made thanks to crowdsourced research, resulting in the FlyWire connectome map. Starting with high-resolution electron microscope data, the connections between the individual neurons (the connectome) was painstakingly pieced together, also using computer algorithms, but with validation by a large group of human volunteers using a game-like platform called EyeWire to perform said validation.

This work also includes identifying cell types, with over 8,000 different cell types identified. Within the full connectome subcircuits were identified, as part of an effort to create an ‘effectome’, i.e. a functional model of the physical circuits. With the finished adult female fruit fly connectome in hand, groups of researchers can now use it to make predictions and put these circuits alongside experimental contexts to connect activity in specific parts of the connectome to specific behavior of these flies.

Perhaps most interesting is how creating a game-like environment made the tedious work of reverse-engineering the brain wiring into something that the average person could help with, drastically cutting back the time required to create this connectome. Perhaps that crowdsourced research can also help with the ongoing process to map the human brain, even if that ups the scale of the dataset by many factors. Until we learn more, at this point even comprehending a fruit fly’s brain may conceivably give us many hints which could speed up understanding the human brain.

Featured image: “Drosophila Melanogaster Proboscis” by [Sanjay Acharya]

Robotic Fruit Fly Won’t Eat Your Fruit

September 18, 2018 by Al Williams 7 Comments

The DelFly project has been busy since the last time we checked in on them. The Dutch team started 13 years ago and produced the smallest camera-carrying drone, and an autonomous tiny ornithopter. However, that ornithopter — now five years old — had to use some traditional control surfaces and a tail like an airplane which was decidedly not fruit fly-like. Now they’ve solved those problems and have announced the DelFly Nimble, a 13 inch and 1-ounce ornithopter. You can see the Nimble in the video below.

The close emulation of a real fly means the thing looks distinctly insect-like in flight. The dual wings use Mylar and form an X configuration. They flap about 17 times per second. A fully charged battery — remember, the whole thing weighs an ounce — lasts five minutes. With an efficient speed of 3 meters per second, the team claims a flight range of over 1 kilometer with a peak speed that can reach 7 meters per second. It can even take a payload, as long as that payload weighs 4 grams or less.

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Backyard Brains: Controlling Cockroaches, Fruit Flys, And People

July 18, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

[Greg Gage] and some of the other crew at Backyard Brains have done a TED talk, had a few successful Kickstarters, and most surprisingly given that pedigree, are actually doing something interesting, fun, and educational. They’re bringing neuroscience to everyone with a series of projects and kits that mutilate cockroaches and send PETA into a tizzy.

[Greg] demonstrated some of his highly modified cockroaches by putting a small Bluetooth backpack on one. The roach had previously been ‘prepared’ by attaching small electrodes to each of its two front antennas. The backpack sends a small electrical signal to the antennae every time I swiped the screen of an iPhone. The roach thinks it’s hitting a wall and turns in the direction I’m swiping, turning it into a roboroach. We seen something like this before but it never gets old.

Far from being your one stop shop for cockroach torture devices, Backyard Brains also has a fairly impressive lab in the basement of their building filled with grad students and genetically modified organisms. [Cort Thompson] is working with fruit flies genetically modified so a neuron will activate when they’re exposed to a specific pulse of light. It’s called optogenetics, and [Cort] has a few of these guys who have an ‘I’m tasting something sweet’ neuron activated when exposed to a pulse of red light.

Of course controlling cockroaches is one thing, and genetically engineering fruit flies is a little more impressive. How about controlling other people? After being hooked up to an EMG box to turn muscle actuation in my arm into static on a speaker, [Greg] asked for a volunteer. [Jason Kridner], the guy behind the BeagleBone, was tagging along with us, and stepped up to have two electrodes attached to his ulnar nerve. With a little bit of circuitry that is available in the Backyard Brains store, I was able to control [Jason]’s wrist with my mind. Extraordinarily cool stuff.

There was far too much awesome stuff at Backyard Brains for a video of reasonable length. Not shown includes projects with scorpions, and an improved version of the roboroach that gives a roach a little bit of encouragement to move forward. We’ll put up a ‘cutting room floor’ video of that a bit later.