These aren’t the kind of brain scans you might be thinking of. The scientists didn’t strap flies into tiny MRIs and zap them, they sliced their brains into 20-micron thick layers and then pulsed each layer with electrons. The resulting data was then used to produce a 3D image comprised of trillions of 3D pixels. The reason they chose fruit flies is because, compared to previous subjects, they’re incredibly complex but still posses a small enough brain to make the endeavor manageable. Unlike worms or other lower animals, fruit flies have built-in navigation systems and exhibit high-level behavior functions such as courtship dances. They’re a lot like us, just on a much smaller scale. According to the team’s research paper: Stitching together millions of 3D images is a monumental task. Even with the aid of Google’s AI, the scientists still spent hundreds of thousands of hours over more than two years tracing synapses in virtual reality to verify the veracity of the project. The big idea here is that these images aren’t just random neurons in the flies’ brains. These specific groupings are called “connectomes” according to the field of “connectomics.” These maps hypothetically work like wiring diagrams for brains. In theory, with the right map, we could trace behavioral activity. James Vincent at The Verge describes the idea of “connectomics” in an article published today: Luckily for organizations and individuals who can’t afford the resources it would take to build this particular project, Google and the scientists at the Janelia Research Campus have published the entire project open-source. Even better, the team painstakingly formatted the data, images, videos, and other information in a way that makes it easily accessible to everyday people and usable by world-class researchers. Learn more about the project and check out all the amazing images and videos at the “Hemibrain” website here. Read next: Scientists may have found the missing link between brain matter and consciousness
