The Fruit Fly’s EyeWise: An Amateur Scientist’s Perspective on Biological Mapping and Artificial Intelligence and the Evolution of the Brain

The map was used by the team from University of California, Santa Barbara, to predict how specialized neurons in the fruit fly’s brain work. The researchers confirmed their predictions in flies who were between seven and nine days old by using a tool called an X-ray machine, showcasing the power of the connectome.

The team was surprised by some of the ways in which the various cells connect to one another, too. When it was thought that there was just one sensory wiring circuit, the neural cells received signals from multiple senses, including hearing and touch. Murthy says it’s astounding how connected the brain is.

Fact-checking millions of data points is time-consuming. The EyeWire platform is an interactive game-like platform that Sebastian and his team used to assemble 3D models of mice’s hindbrains. The 100 best-performing players were trained to identify different types of cell and then be assigned to work on a real project, which would normally take 33 neuroscientists a year to complete.

Brain mapping is one of the most delicate and complex tasks in neuroscience, and even the smallest error can markedly affect the results. The achievement is remarkable because of the fact that around a dozen people worked on the project from all walks of life, from around the world. They collaborated to do some testing on the results produced by artificial intelligence. Hundreds of neuroscientists who study fruit flies volunteered to support the project. Together, they have been credited as authors. Amateur science is as old as science itself, but this project adds yet another way to involve more brain power in what is increasingly data-hungry research.

“This is a huge deal,” says Clay Reid, a neurobiologist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, who was not involved in the project but has worked with one of the team members who was. “It’s something that the world has been anxiously waiting for, for a long time.”

NaturePodcast: Enabling a new scientific experiment to detect -rays from far away warriors and a giant fruit fly in Ceres

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Europe’s oldest battle featured warriors from far away, and the dwarf planet Ceres’s frozen ocean has deep impurities.

The researchers hope that they can explain how lightning typically follows these -ray events.

Physicists have demonstrated that levels of -ray production are higher on Earth than they were previously thought.

High-altitude observations may help explain how lightning happens — plus, researchers piece together a complete circuit-diagram of the fruit fly brain.

“We thought [this study] would be many, many years in the making,” says Murthy. The volunteer community stepped in and were excited to participate with us as the technology developed. And we completed it, in what I would consider record time.”

Amateur scientists and volunteers are getting increasingly involved in other areas, too. Earlier this month, researchers at the United Nations Statistics Division in New York City and Open Data Watch, a non-profit organization based in Washington DC, described how citizen scientists are helping to fill in data gaps for the UN Sustainable Develop-ment Goals, especially for marginalized communities5.

How the Asteroid Dimorphos became Brighter and Redder when NASA’s Spacecraft Hit It: Using Fly-Brains to Verify the Results

Last year, a study6 in Nature described how the asteroid Dimorphos became temporarily brighter and redder when NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft deliberately hit it. The finding was confirmed by a small group of amateur astronomers who were able to share their observational data with professional scientists through an app.

Often, it’s the professionals who need to check the work of the amateurs. What is different about fly-brain work is that the volunteers are helping the scientists to verify their findings, something that could be used in our data rich world.