Crowdsourcing the Fly Connectome

To fully map the fly brain, Seung and colleagues will develop “FlyWire,” a crowdsourcing platform designed to help scientists around the country analyze thousands of electron micrographs of brain circuits. The team will work with scientists at Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn VA, to acquire the pictures and then test the platform in their lab before making it available to the neuroscience community. The team will use this approach to study sensory circuits. Tools like “FlyWire” may one day be used to map the circuits underlying brain diseases in humans.