第2477期:Fly brain breakthrough ’huge leap’ to unlock human mind

Fruit flies can walk, hover and the males can even sing love songs to woo females. All this, and these flies have a brain that's tinier than a pinhead. Researchers have taken a closer look and found that it's a tangle of more than 130,000 separate wires called neurons – all packed together, making more than 50 million separate connections to each other.

果蝇能行走和盘旋，雄性果蝇甚至能够通过唱 “情歌” 来追求雌性的芳心。果蝇虽然具备这些能力，它们的大脑却比针头还小。研究人员通过更进一步的观察发现，果蝇的大脑是一团缠结在一起的 13 万个独立 “导线”，即神经元。这些神经元之间形成了超过 5000 万个独立的连接。

It's taken them ten years, using advanced artificial intelligence systems, to identify its detailed structure, composition and connections. In essence, a wiring diagram, scientifically called the fly connectome.

科学家们花了十年的时间，使用先进的人工智能系统辨认出了果蝇大脑的详细结构、组成部分和连接方式。从本质上说，科学家们建立了一个接线图，科学上称之为苍蝇脑连接组。

Even though human brains are a million times larger than a fly's, Dr Gregory Jefferis of the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge says that the new connectome is the first step in truly understanding, not just how fly brains work, but ours, too. That's because there are likely to be similarities in the way they're both wired.

虽然人类大脑比苍蝇大脑大 100 多万倍，但位于剑桥的医学研究委员会分子生物学实验室的格雷戈里·杰弗里斯博士表示，这次研究建立的苍蝇脑连接组是真正理解大脑运作机制的第一步，不论是对于苍蝇大脑还是人类大脑来说。这是因为这两种大脑的神经连接方式很可能有相似之处。

It will take decades to have a complete map of the human brain. But this analysis of fruit flies is the start of a new, deeper understanding of our own minds.

绘制人类大脑的完整图谱还需要几十年的时间。但对果蝇大脑的分析是一个起点：我们对自身的大脑也将有一个更新、更深刻的认识。

词汇表

hover 盘旋
woo 追求
pinhead 针头
tangle 缠结的一团
neurons 神经元
in essence 本质上
molecular biology 分子生物学