1: A new whole animal connectome dropped this month, this time for a three-day-old larva of the annelid worm Platynereis dumerilii. It contains 9162 cells, 1642 neurons, and 28,717 presynaptic sites. This is the third whole animal synaptic connectome mapped after
How do you interpret data shown in the figure for 3d reconstructions of different nervous system modules? It is a beautiful connection of interspersed and colorful lines, but what can be drawn just from looking at the figure?
Fantastic question. Most broadly it's basically a clustering exercise, which is helpful for exploring the data and understanding it, but risks oversimplifying. My main takeaway from it is that there are different aspects of the nervous system that can be decomposed into different functional roles in a seemingly coherent manner.
It's also interesting that the ciliomotor system seems to be one of the most central modules. This controls the movement of cilia, which are hair-like structures on the surface of the animal that help it to swim. Didn't know about this at all. Reality is surprisingly complex.
How do you interpret data shown in the figure for 3d reconstructions of different nervous system modules? It is a beautiful connection of interspersed and colorful lines, but what can be drawn just from looking at the figure?
Fantastic question. Most broadly it's basically a clustering exercise, which is helpful for exploring the data and understanding it, but risks oversimplifying. My main takeaway from it is that there are different aspects of the nervous system that can be decomposed into different functional roles in a seemingly coherent manner.
It's also interesting that the ciliomotor system seems to be one of the most central modules. This controls the movement of cilia, which are hair-like structures on the surface of the animal that help it to swim. Didn't know about this at all. Reality is surprisingly complex.