探花直播 of Cambridge - 探花直播 of Vermont

First map of every neuron in an adult fly brain complete

jg533 — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 15:04:57 +0000

This landmark achievement has been conducted by the FlyWire Consortium, a large international collaboration including researchers from the 探花直播 of Cambridge, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Princeton 探花直播, and the 探花直播 of Vermont. It is published today in two papers in the journal Nature.

探花直播diagram of all 139,255 neurons in the adult fly brain is the first of an entire brain for an animal that can walk and see. Previous efforts have completed the whole brain diagrams for much smaller brains, for example a fruit fly larva which has 3,016 neurons, and a nematode worm which has 302 neurons.

探花直播researchers say the whole fly brain map is a key first step to completing larger brains. Since the fruit fly is a common tool in research, its brain map can be used to advance our understanding of how neural circuits work.

Dr Gregory Jefferis, from the 探花直播 of Cambridge and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, one of the co-leaders of the research, said: 鈥淚f we want to understand how the brain works, we need a mechanistic understanding of how all the neurons fit together and let you think. For most brains we have no idea how these networks function.聽

鈥淔lies can do all kinds of complicated things like walk, fly, navigate, and the males sing to the females. Brain wiring diagrams are a first step towards understanding everything we鈥檙e interested in 鈥� how we control our movement, answer the telephone, or recognise a friend.鈥�

Dr Mala Murthy from Princeton 探花直播, one of the co-leaders of the research, said: 鈥淲e have made the entire database open and freely available to all researchers. We hope this will be transformative for neuroscientists trying to better understand how a healthy brain works. In the future we hope that it will be possible to compare what happens when things go wrong in our brains, for example in mental health conditions.鈥澛�

Dr Marta Costa from the 探花直播 of Cambridge, who was also involved in the research, said 鈥淭his brain map, the biggest so far, has only been possible thanks to technical advances that didn鈥檛 seem possible ten years ago. It is a true testament to the way that innovation can drive research forward. 探花直播next steps will be to generate even bigger maps, such as a mouse brain, and ultimately, a human one.鈥�

探花直播scientists found that there were substantial similarities between the wiring in this map and previous smaller-scale efforts to map out parts of the fly brain. This led the researchers to conclude that there are many similarities in wiring between individual brains 鈥� that each brain isn鈥檛 a unique structure.

When comparing their brain diagram to previous diagrams of small areas of the brain, the researchers also found that about 0.5% of neurons have developmental variations that could cause connections between neurons to be mis-wired. 探花直播researchers say it will be important聽to understand, through future research, if these changes are linked to individuality or brain disorders.聽

Making the map

3D rendering of all 140,000 neurons in the fruit fly brain.

3D rendering of all ~140k neurons in the fruit fly brain. Credit: Data source FlyWire.ai; Rendering by Philipp Schlegel ( 探花直播 of Cambridge/MRC LMB).

A whole fly brain is less than one聽millimetre wide. 探花直播researchers started with one female brain cut into seven thousand slices, each only 40 nanometres thick, that were previously scanned using high resolution electron microscopy in the laboratory of project co-leader Davi Bock at聽Janelia Research Campus in the US.

Analysing over 100 terabytes of image data (equivalent to the storage in 100 typical laptops) to extract the shapes of about 140,000 neurons and 50 million connections between them is too big a challenge for humans to complete manually. 探花直播researchers built on AI developed at Princeton 探花直播 to identify and map neurons and their connections to each other.

However, the AI still makes many errors in datasets of this size. 探花直播Princeton 探花直播 researchers established the FlyWire Consortium 鈥� made up of teams in more than 76 laboratories and 287 researchers around the world, as well as volunteers from the general public 鈥� which spent an estimated 33 person-years painstakingly proofreading all the data.

Dr Sebastian Seung, from Princeton 探花直播, who was one of the co-leaders of the research, said: 鈥淢apping the whole brain has been made possible by advances in AI computing - it would have not been possible to reconstruct the entire wiring diagram manually. This is a display of how AI can move neuroscience forward. 探花直播fly brain is a milestone on our way to reconstructing a wiring diagram of a whole mouse brain.鈥�

探花直播researchers also annotated many details on the wiring diagram, such as classifying more than 8,000 cell types across the brain. This allows researchers to select particular systems within the brain for further study, such as the neurons involved in sight or movement.聽

Dr Philipp Schlegel, the first author of one of the studies, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, said: 鈥淭his dataset is a bit like Google Maps but for brains: the raw wiring diagram between neurons is like knowing which structures on satellite images of the Earth correspond to streets and buildings. Annotating neurons is like adding the names for streets and towns, business opening times, phone numbers and reviews聽to the map 鈥� you need both for it to be really useful.鈥�

Simulating brain function

This is also the first whole brain wiring map 鈥� often called a connectome 鈥� to predict the function of all the connections between neurons.聽

Neurons use electrical signals to send messages. Each neuron can have hundreds of branches that connect it to other neurons. 探花直播points where these branches meet and transmit signals between neurons are called synapses. There are two main ways that neurons communicate across synapses: excitatory (which promotes the continuation of the electrical signal in the receiving neuron), or inhibitory (which reduces the likelihood that the next neuron will transmit signals).

Researchers from the team used AI image scanning technology to predict whether each synapse was inhibitory or excitatory.

Dr Gregory Jefferis added: 鈥淭o begin to simulate the brain digitally, we need to know not only the structure of the brain, but also how the neurons function to turn each other on and off.鈥�

鈥淯sing our data, which has been shared online as we worked, other scientists have already started trying to simulate how the fly brain responds to the outside world. This is an important start, but we will need to collect many different kinds of data to produce reliable simulations of how a brain functions.鈥�

Associate Professor Davi Bock, one of the co-leaders of the research from the 探花直播 of Vermont, said: 鈥� 探花直播hyper-detail of electron microscopy data creates its own challenges, especially at scale. This team wrote sophisticated software algorithms to identify patterns of cell structure and connectivity within all that detail.聽

鈥淲e now can make precise synaptic level maps and use these to better understand cell types and circuit structure at whole-brain scale. This will inevitably lead to a deeper understanding of how nervous systems process, store and recall information. I think this approach points the way forward for the analysis of future whole-brain connectomes, in the fly as well as in other species."

This research was conducted using a female fly brain. Since there are differences in neuronal structure between male and female fly brains, the researchers also plan to聽characterise a male brain in the future.聽

探花直播principal funders were the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative, Wellcome, Medical Research Council, Princeton 探花直播 and National Science Foundation.

References

Schlegel, P. et al: Whole-brain annotation and multi-connectome cell typing of Drosophila. Nature, Oct 2024. DOI:聽10.1038/s41586-024-07686-5

Dorkenwald, S. et al: Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain. Nature, Oct 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07558-y

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探花直播first wiring diagram of every neuron in an adult brain and the 50 million connections between them has been produced for a fruit fly.

Brain wiring diagrams are a first step towards understanding everything we鈥檙e interested in 鈥� how we control our movement, answer the telephone, or recognise a friend.

Gregory Jefferis

探花直播first complete map of every neuron in an adult fly brain.

FlyWire.ai; Rendering by Philipp Schlegel ( 探花直播 of Cambridge/MRC LMB).

3D rendering of all 140,000 neurons in the adult fruit fly brain.

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright 漏探花直播 of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways 鈥� on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Cost to protect globally important forests falls disproportionately on those living closest

jg533 — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 08:52:53 +0000

Local communities are not incentivised to protect tropical forests that are hugely valuable for global climate regulation, a new study has found.聽International funding could help smallholder farmers to boost yields on their existing land to incentivise long-term forest protection.

Conservationists鈥� eco-footprints suggest education alone won鈥檛 change behaviour

fpjl2 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:12:28 +0000

Conservationists work to save the planet, and few are as knowledgeable when it comes to the environmental pressures of the Anthropocene.

However, the first wide-ranging study to compare the environmental footprint of conservationists to those of others 鈥� medics and economists, in this case 鈥� has found that, while conservationists behave in a marginally 鈥榞reener鈥� manner, the differences are surprisingly modest.

Researchers say their findings add to increasing evidence that education and knowledge has little impact on individual behavior when it comes to major issues such as the environment and personal health.

Conservation scientists from the universities of Cambridge, UK, and Vermont, US, gathered data on a range of lifestyle choices 鈥� from bottled water use to air travel, meat consumption and family size 鈥� for 734 participants across the three groupings.

They found that fellow conservationists recycled more and ate less meat than either economists or medics, were similar to the other groups in how they travelled to work, but owned more cats and dogs.

探花直播combined footprint score of the conservationists was roughly 16% less than that of economists, and 7% lower than the medics.

Nevertheless the average conservationist in the study鈥檚 sample took nine flights a year (half for work; half personal), ate meat or fish five times a week, and purchased very few offsets to their personal carbon emissions.

In fact, researchers found little correlation between the extent of environmental knowledge and environmentally-friendly behavior.

Moreover, greener action in one aspect of a person鈥檚 life did not predict it in any others 鈥� regardless of occupation. So a positive and relatively simple habit such as recycling did not appear to act as a 鈥済ateway鈥� to more committed behaviour change.聽聽聽

探花直播team suggest that overall improvements might be most effectively achieved through tailored interventions: targeting higher-impact behaviors such as meat consumption and flying through government regulation and by incentivising alternatives.聽

鈥淲hile it may be hard to accept, we have to start acknowledging that increased education alone is perhaps not the panacea we would hope,鈥� said lead author Andrew Balmford, Professor of Conservation Science at the 探花直播 of Cambridge.

鈥淪tructural changes are key. For example, providing more affordable public transport, or removing subsidies for beef and lamb production. Just look at the effect of improved collection schemes on the uptake of recycling.

鈥� 探花直播idea of 鈥榥udging鈥� 鈥� encouraging particular choices through changes in how cafes are laid out or travel tickets are sold, for instance 鈥� might have untapped potential to help us lower our footprint,鈥� Balmford said.聽聽

鈥淎s conservationists we must do a great deal more to lead by example. Obvious starting points include changing the ways we interact, so that attending frequent international meetings is no longer regarded as essential to making scientific progress. For many of us flying is probably the largest contributor to our personal emissions.鈥�

探花直播study鈥檚 four authors offer their own mea culpa: pointing out that, between them, they have seven children, took 31 flights in 2016, and ate an average of two meat meals in the week before submitting their study 鈥� now published 鈥� to the journal Biological Conservation.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think conservationists are hypocrites, I think that we are human 鈥� meaning that some decisions are rational, and others, we rationalise,鈥� said study co-author Brendan Fisher from the 探花直播 of Vermont鈥檚 Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.聽聽

鈥淥ur results show that conservationists pick and choose from a buffet of pro-environmental behaviours the same as everyone else. We might eat less meat and compost more, but we fly more 鈥� and many of us still commute significant distances in gas cars.鈥�

For the study, researchers distributed surveys on environmental behavior through conservation, economics and biomedical organisations to targeted newsletters, mailing lists and social media groups.

Of the self-selecting respondents, there were 300 conservationists, 207 economists and 227 medics from across the UK and US.

探花直播participants were also asked a series of factual questions on environmental issues 鈥� from atmospheric change to species extinction 鈥� and ways to most effectively lower carbon footprints.

鈥淚nterestingly, conservationists scored no better than economists on environmental knowledge and awareness of pro-environmental actions,鈥� said Balmford.

Overall footprint scores were higher for males, US nationals, economists, and people with higher degrees and larger incomes, but were unrelated to environmental knowledge.

Fisher says the study supports the idea that 鈥榲alues鈥� are a key driver of behaviour. Across the professions, attaching a high value to the environment was consistently associated with a lower footprint: fewer personal flights and less food waste, for example.

鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 matter if you are a medic, economist, or conservationist, our study shows that one of the most significant drivers of your behaviour is how much you value the environment,鈥� Fisher said.聽

鈥淓conomists who care about the environment behave as well as conservationists.鈥�

A new study shows that even those presumably best informed on the environment find it hard to consistently 鈥渨alk the walk鈥�, prompting scientists to question whether relying solely on information campaigns will ever be enough.聽聽

While it may be hard to accept, we have to start acknowledging that increased education alone is perhaps not the panacea we would hope

Andrew Balmford

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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