With about 100,000 neurons – compared to some 86 billion in humans – the fly brain is small enough to study at the level of individual cells. The fruit fly Drosophila is a popular choice for such research. Studying the brain of any one animal in depth can thus reveal the general principles behind the workings of all brains. eLife digestĪnimal brains of all sizes, from the smallest to the largest, work in broadly similar ways. Biologically, we examine distributions of connection strengths, neural motifs on different scales, electrical consequences of compartmentalization, and evidence that maximizing packing density is an important criterion in the evolution of the fly’s brain. We make the data public and simplify access, reducing the effort needed to answer circuit questions, and provide procedures linking the neurons defined by our analysis with genetic reagents. We provide detailed circuits consisting of neurons and their chemical synapses for most of the central brain. We define cell types, refine computational compartments, and provide an exhaustive atlas of cell examples and types, many of them novel. Improved methods include new procedures to prepare, image, align, segment, find synapses in, and proofread such large data sets. We summarize new methods and present the circuitry of a large fraction of the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The neural circuits responsible for animal behavior remain largely unknown.
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