A connectome is not enough – what is still needed to understand the brain of Drosophila?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Understanding the structure and operation of any nervous system has been a subject of research for well over a century. A near-term opportunity in this quest is to understand the brain of a model species, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. This is an enticing target given its relatively small size (roughly 200,000 neurons), coupled with the behavioral richness that this brain supports, and the wide variety of techniques now available to study both brain and behavior. It is clear that within a few years we will possess a connectome for D. melanogaster: an electron-microscopy-level description of all neurons and their chemical synaptic connections. Given what we will soon have, what we already know and the research that is currently underway, what more do we need to know to enable us to understand the fly's brain? Here, we itemize the data we will need to obtain, collate and organize in order to build an integrated model of the brain of D. melanogaster.