Structure of Fruit Fly Brain (2018)
nature.com
Link to the excellent paper (IMHO) behind this article: https://cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)30787-6
You might also like: http://virtualflybrain.org/
The data is cool, but the demonstration of the process is much, much cooler.
If other teams can replicate it to produce images of several fruit fly brains, so it's possible to study the variation, that could really be the start of something big. And if they can pair them with genome sequences, to start investigating how genetics influences neural development....
Whenever I see something like this, I must irresistibly think of some smart monkeys trying to grasp what the humans are doing, or a mechanic attempts to operate on a brain.
Can we simulate a fly brain in a computer?
Not even close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm
"Although the long-term goal is to model all 959 cells of the C. elegans, the first stage is to model the worm's locomotion by simulating the 302 neurons and 95 muscle cells."