THE connections within the whole brain of an infant fly have been mapped, creating the largest such "connectome" described to date. The work should allow researchers to understand how signals travel through a fly's brain, how different regions of the brain interact and, ultimately, how specific behaviours are generated at the neural level. Brains are mostly made of cells called neurons, which have long branches linking them together. Neighbouring neurons can signal each other at junctions between the cells called synapses, where one neuron releases a chemical called a neurotransmitter and the other receives it. The map of the neurons in a brain and the synapses is called the connectome.
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