The work offers the opportunity to study its functioning and paves the way to map those of other species and advance in the treatment of brain disorders, the publication highlights.

Fruit flies share 60 percent of human DNA, and three out of four human genetic diseases have a parallel in them. Understanding their brains is therefore a stepping stone to understanding the brains of larger, more complex species, such as humans, the authors note.

Their brains may seem tiny – they have about a million fewer neurons than the human organ – but a fruit fly can see, smell, hear, walk and fly, they explained. What’s more, they socialize, navigate and learn from experience, Sebastian Seung, a researcher at Princeton University in the United States and co-leader, along with Mala Murthy, of the research team, told the press.

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