
The most complete brain map: a fly's 'connectome' - laurex
https://www.wired.com/story/most-complete-brain-map-ever-is-here-a-flys-connectome/
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MrsPeaches
For anyone with an interest in this field, I would highly recommend Vehicles
by Valentino Braiteberg. [1]

A very nice intro into how these structures could give rise to actual
behaviours.

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483485.Vehicles](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483485.Vehicles)

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martythemaniak
I highly recommend this lecture by Jeff Lichtman, where he describes the
machine they've built to slice the brain and the software they have written to
visualize and make sense of this vast amount of data:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVy0n_rdBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVy0n_rdBI)

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lloda
So, how far are we from a fly simulation that works?

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npo9
This is theoretically all the data about a flys nervous system, which would be
the hardest data collection part of building a fly simulation.

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GitRHero
This seems to be more simply all the data about the physical orientations and
positions of neurons in a fly's nervous system.

I'd guess there is still humongous amounts of data missing that would be
necessary for a simulation:

\- the exact biological and chemical makeup of each neuron

\- the biological and chemical environment in which those neurons exist

\- the exact physics that govern the biological and chemical reactions
happening in and around the neurons (and the ability to accurately simulate
those physics)

\- maybe most importantly, even if we have all those above (i.e. the ability
to fully and accurately simulate biological systems as complex as individual
cells), we may still missing the electro-chemical activation "state" of the
neurons that allows the fly to operate as a cohesive whole. (as if we had all
of the hardware of a computer, but none of the software)

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falcor84
The GP asked about "a fly simulation that works", and I think we won't need
anything similar to your proposed demands. I'd wager that we can approach this
decently well with a "basic" mathematical model run at discrete steps on the
order of 0.1ms.

I suppose that we'll hit a big wall once we reach simulation time frames which
involves changes in protein expression, but I think we'll have a decent
simulation of what a "static" fly long before the end of the decade.

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tsimionescu
If the model has no data on the neuro-chemistry of the fly brain, why would
you think it is even remotely close to simulating the behavior of the fly?

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wyattpeak
You don't necessarily need to understand something to a deep degree in order
to simulate it. Ptolemy created a very accurate simulation of the solar system
with a wildly poor understanding of how things moved, just because the system
was simple and very consistent.

Simulating a fly is obviously a much larger task, but "we can't possibly
simulate it unless we understand X" seems to me a misguided criticism.

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perl4ever
It seems to me that fundamentally people assume that simulating a neuron is
vastly, _vastly_ simpler than simulating a bacterium. Ok, you can assume that.
But what gives you confidence in that? Do you think that simulating a
bacterium is less complex than simulating a fly, or about the same?

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falcor84
It all depends on what questions you want to answer with your simulation. If
what you care about is where in the room the thing will be after 10 seconds at
a resolution of 1 cubic centimeter, then yes, simulating a bacterium is vastly
simpler.

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perl4ever
Ok. I thought it was understood that more detail was of interest with neurons
than "1 cubic cm".

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allovernow
That's awesome but...where are the images???

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kwelstr
[https://www.janelia.org/project-
team/flyem/hemibrain](https://www.janelia.org/project-team/flyem/hemibrain)

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alcover
To view the pictures you have to let this.. thing load 40 (forty) scripts.

Screw it. I won't view the pictures.

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fnord77
Would this map of neuronal connections be the same on all fruit flies of that
species?

Or does it vary between individuals?

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refurb
I’d be shocked if there wasn’t some variation across individuals, but suspect
that at a high level, the major structures are the same.

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fnord77
correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought this map isn't at the high level. It is
a map of every single neuron connection for this region of the fly's brain. As
low-level as it gets.

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refurb
Sure. But the question was - is every brain the same. I would say it’s
similar, but not identical.

Kind of like the first human genome sequenced. It’s just one humans DNA, but
any give human has very similar DNA. Small differences matter greatly though.

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appleflaxen
what software is being used for the 3d reconstruction and visualization? The
images used to make the movie are incredibly impressive.

