{"id":9899,"date":"2024-10-03T12:15:24","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T20:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/?p=9899"},"modified":"2024-10-15T15:03:08","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T23:03:08","slug":"the-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/archives\/9899","title":{"rendered":"The Fly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Beautiful, innit? The brain of a fruit fly, showing neurons (~ 140,000) color coded by the circuit they operate in. See the full report here<\/a>.

The entire brain of a fruit fly is no larger than a sesame seed. This is a breathtaking accomplishment, about a decade in the making. I mean c’mon, you don’t need to be a neuroscientist to have your mind blown by this. Better yet, read the report and you’ll see the scientists, having captured the full map of the fly brain, used it to create a virtual brain which they then installed in a virtual fly. Then they stimulated the specific neurons that sense a sugar taste, and viola! the toy fly’s proboscis (nose) extended toward the sensation, just like the proboscis would on a real fly intending to feed. As if that weren’t cool enough, they then figured out the specific neuronal pathways involved in sensing sugar on both the right side and left side of the proboscis, different pathways. And here’s what they found<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The simulated brain did what a real brain would: It commanded the proboscis to stick out so that the fly could eat. And if the virtual fly tasted sugar only on the right side of its proboscis, the brain sent commands to bend it toward the right.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you know what they didn’t find? Not a spec of evidence for a “conductor” of the fly’s thoughts. Imagine that – a brain that animates its host all by itself. The heresy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And below is the animated 3-D image. See the article<\/a> for the toy fly in action. More of this please, scientists \ud83d\ude09

People, I beseech you, that’s A LOT of interconnected ganglia to make a fruit fly<\/em> work, no? Think about this next time you carelessly swat and kill one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n