Complete male fruit fly brain connectome unlocks sex-specific brain comparisons
Scientists have finished the first full connectome of the male fruit fly’s central nervous system, mapping all 166,000 neurons across brain, optic lobes, and ventral nerve cord. When compared with the female map unveiled in 2024, this resource enables researchers to identify sex-specific neural circuits underlying behaviors such as mating and aggression. The project, by the FlyEM team at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus with Cambridge Connectomics and Google Research, was published in Cell and Current Biology and lays groundwork for future large-scale connectomics across species.