Neuroscience alumni’s research included in BBC’s favourite science stories of 2024

The BBC-commended paper, which was published in the journal Nature, identified the position, shape and connections of every single one of the 130,000 cells and 50 million connections which make up a fruit fly’s brain.

The most detailed analysis of the brain of an adult animal ever produced, it was described by one leading brain specialist independent of the research as a 'huge leap' in our understanding of our own brains.

Laia Serratosa Capdevila said: “It’s exciting to see that our work has piqued the interest of not only fellow scientists but also the general public.”

Alexander S. Bates said: “Modern artificial neural networks are powerful, but in some ways they are crude - the fly brain controls navigation, locomotion, sensory perception, social interaction, learning and memory all on the energy budget of a small piece of banana, and mostly straight out of its egg. So I think neurobiology still has much to tell the computer scientist.” 

Laia Serratosa Capdevila currently leads Aelysia, a neuroscience research company she founded which helps laboratories with expert manual data annotation and reconstruction. Alexander S. Bates is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Rachel Wilson at Harvard Medical School where he works on imaging neurons in flies as they navigate in virtual reality.

Links

• Lost city found by accident and a fly's brain mapped: 2024's scientific wins (BBC website) 
• Fly brain breakthrough 'huge leap' to unlock human mind (BBC website)  
• Whole-brain annotation and multi-connectome cell typing of Drosophila (Nature journal) 

Images

Credit: Jenny Lu for image of Alexander S. Bates; Albert Llimós/El 9 Nou for image of Laia Serratosa Capdevila.