A team led by John Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge have completed the most expansive map of a brain to date. The diagram, which traces every neuron and connection of a larval fruit fly (whose biology is comparable with humans), took 12 years to map and is expected to inform future brain research. To survey the brain, scientists sliced it into hundreds and thousands …
A 525-million-year-old fossil of an extinct worm-like animal known as the Cardiodictyon catenulum was first discovered in China in 1984, but only recently have scientists found that the barely half-an-inch animal has a brain. Using a technique called “chromatic filtering,” scientists were able to reveal the animal’s nervous system and brain in an unsegmented head. Not only is this finding extremely out of the ordinary—as …
Scientists at Rice University have successfully used a remote control to operate the wings of fruit flies, after hacking into their brains. To achieve this, the researchers genetically modified flies to express a specific heat-sensitive ion channel. Then they inserted a heat trigger—magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles that heat up in the presence of a magnetic charge—into the flies’ brains. When a magnetic field is switched …
