Reacción a "Reactions: first whole-brain connectome of an insect brain obtained"

I think the work is spectacular. It is rigorous and of good quality. It is a study that falls under the umbrella of connectomics, a new neurotechnology for systematically reconstructing the brains of different animals using automated electron microscopy techniques. This began with the pioneering and almost heroic work of White in Brenner's Cambridge lab, in a paper they humorously called "The Mind of the Worm", precisely when I was working there, and has now become an almost industrial process, involving large groups of biologists, microscopists, engineers and even large technology companies, with inexorable progress to brains of ever more complex species. 

These data are important for understanding brain computations and how they generate behaviour. In fact, the maps of the Drosophila brain have already led to several first-level studies explaining the information processing mechanism of its neural circuits. Drosophila was introduced to biology in Morgan's lab, in my own department at Columbia University, over 100 years ago and revolutionised genetics. I think Morgan would pop the champagne now because Drosophila, with this push to map all the connections in its larvae, can also revolutionise neuroscience. 

It is very difficult to carry out these studies, you need huge teams, with a lot of investment of time and labour. That is why it is important to coordinate national and international funding and efforts in neurotechnology. Mapping the mouse connectome is being studied in a worldwide collaboration. These methods are also starting to be used in the human brain, but in a very early stage.