New Study Unravels Neural Mystery With Imaging, Computation
(June 25, 2015) Think
the rat’s nest of cables under your desk is bad? Try keeping the trillions of
connections crisscrossing your brain organized and free of tangles. A new study
coauthored by researchers at UC San Francisco and the Freie Universität Berlin
reveals this seemingly intractable job may be simpler than it appears.
The researchers used high-resolution time-lapse imaging of
the developing brains of pupal fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) paired
with mathematical simulations to unravel a trick of neural wiring that had
stumped neuroscientists for decades. They discovered three simple rules that
may explain how the complicated visual system of the humble fruit fly – with
its eight-hundred-lens compound eyes – self-organizes as it grows. The authors
said a similar approach could one day help us understand the rules governing
the development of our own, much more complex brains.
The paper, titled, “The Developmental Rules of Neural
Superposition in Drosophila,” appears online June 25 ahead of print in the July
2 issue of the journal Cell.