Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain

Sven Dorkenwald, Arie Matsliah, Amy R. Sterling, Philipp Schlegel, Szi-Chieh Yu, Claire E. Mckellar, Albert Lin, Marta Costa, Katharina Eichler, Yijie Yin, Will Silversmith, Casey Schneider-Mizell, Chris S. Jordan, Derrick Brittain, Akhilesh Halageri, Kai Kuehner, Oluwaseun Ogedengbe, Ryan Morey, Jay Gager, Krzysztof KrukEric Perlman, Runzhe Yang, David Deutsch, Doug Bland, Marissa Sorek, Ran Lu, Thomas Macrina, Kisuk Lee, J. Alexander Bae, Shang Mu, Barak Nehoran, Eric Mitchell, Sergiy Popovych, Jingpeng Wu, Zhen Jia, Manuel A. Castro, Nico Kemnitz, Dodam Ih, Alexander Shakeel Bates, Nils Eckstein, Jan Funke, Forrest Collman, Davi D. Bock, Gregory S. X. E. Jefferis, H. Sebastian Seung*, Mala Murthy*, FlyWire Consortium

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Connections between neurons can be mapped by acquiring and analysing electron microscopic brain images. In recent years, this approach has been applied to chunks of brains to reconstruct local connectivity maps that are highly informative 1–6, but nevertheless inadequate for understanding brain function more globally. Here we present a neuronal wiring diagram of a whole brain containing 5 × 10 7 chemical synapses 7 between 139,255 neurons reconstructed from an adult female Drosophila melanogaster 8,9. The resource also incorporates annotations of cell classes and types, nerves, hemilineages and predictions of neurotransmitter identities 10–12. Data products are available for download, programmatic access and interactive browsing and have been made interoperable with other fly data resources. We derive a projectome—a map of projections between regions—from the connectome and report on tracing of synaptic pathways and the analysis of information flow from inputs (sensory and ascending neurons) to outputs (motor, endocrine and descending neurons) across both hemispheres and between the central brain and the optic lobes. Tracing from a subset of photoreceptors to descending motor pathways illustrates how structure can uncover putative circuit mechanisms underlying sensorimotor behaviours. The technologies and open ecosystem reported here set the stage for future large-scale connectome projects in other species.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)124-138
Number of pages15
JournalNature
Volume634
Issue number8032
Early online date2 Oct 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Oct 2024
Externally publishedYes

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