Amazement at Fruit Fly Brains

Here is a creature that is easy to wave away, but people should appreciate the work that the Master Engineer put into it. For that matter, it is notoriously difficult to swat. One reason is that it is so small that the air from a striking hand buffets them.

Another reason fruit flies are difficult to swat is because of their vision and the design of their eyes. The fruit fly brain has been mapped, and some of its 140,000 neurons involve the eyes. Such a mapping feat could not have been accomplished until recent years.

Fruit fly, Flickr / John Tann (CC BY 2.0), modified at PhotoFunia

Researchers had to start small, as humans have 80 billion neurons. They found over eight thousand types of neurons in different classes based on functions. Various ones would send signals from the brain to certain areas. It shows that human understanding of the Creator's work is very incomplete, such as how some connections seem random, and that neurons take unexpected routes. This research may have implications for neuroscience.

Groundbreaking new research has documented the complexity and design of the brains of fruit flies (Drosphila melanogaster). Many of the results were published in a series of papers in the journal Nature. The basis for the research is the completion of the entire wiring diagram (called a connectome) of the fruit fly brain, which consists of 140,000 neurons. In addition, it includes more than 50 million connections (chemical synapses). Keep in mind that, despite the number of neurons and connections, fruit fly brains are tiny, smaller than a poppy seed. Previously, researchers had mapped the brains of a few other organisms, including the roundworm C. elegans, however their brains consist of only 302 neurons.

To read the rest, fly over to "Design, Engineering, Specified Complexity: Appreciating the Fruit Fly Brain." Be sure to come back for a short article on marvelous fruit fly vision.

Earlier, difficulty in swatting a fruit fly was mentioned. Not only because of wind from the hand, but they have the necessary types of cells where neurons connect behind photoreceptors. All that "hardware" needs to be regulated for changing lighting conditions, and some of it changes quickly. In audio applications, gain control regulates, say, a microphone or guitar input so it is loud enough without distortion. Fruit flies have a kind of gain control for their vision. This may be considered in understanding human vision.

There is specified complexity and amazing applications of brain functions in such a tiny creature. Part of what is learned here may possibly be applied to human and animals. To believe that such engineering is the product of time, chance, randomness, mutations, and so on is the height of absurdity. But then, they are accustomed to denying credit to God.

Our brain is designed to smoothly and constantly process what we see via the incredibly sensitive photoreceptors (cones and rods) of our eyes.1 But throughout a typical day, our eyes may be subject to rapid changes of shadows and light many times in a fraction of a second. Regardless, we are able to see almost seamlessly. How is this visual stability maintained?

Short but very interesting, the rest of this article is at "Seeing the Case for Creation in Fruit Flies." Also recommended is material on using an aspect of their eye designs for human use, "Copying Fruit Fly Eye Jitters."