Researchers from Google and the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia have created a 3d map of brain connectivity of any animal. The 3D map is called connectome, and it contains around 25,000 neurons of outlines a fruit fly along with about 20 million synapses.
It also includes a large region that is involved in learning, navigation, smell, and vision as per reports from Scientist.
Beginning of 3d Map
Though 3D mapping is created before as in 2013 when former US President Barack Obama announced the Brain Activity Map project which is a program trying to repair the full record of neural activity across complete neural circuits. However 3d map of the human brain has been yet to discover and recent projects on fruit fly’s 3D map brain took two years to create. First, the scientist cut flies ‘ brains into small parts by using a hot knife and then in the second stage, the scientists put each slice of an electron microscope to capture the image.
As reported by The Verge, even though following each neuron to brain needs extreme attention and the process is extremely meticulous work, critics said that such maps have not yet led to a major discovery.
However, it should be mentioned that there was only one organism that has its entire brain mapped like the fruit fly and it is the roundworm C. elegans, a species of smooth-skinned, unsegmented worms with a long circular body shape which decreased at the points. The Scientist also says that a single model likely won’t provide any universal truths as different files have different brain connectivity.
3d Model of the human brain wouldn’t arrive any time soon. It requires detail researching and data of human brain needed to say, Researcher.