Speaker: Professor Ann-Shyn CHIANG, Brain Research Center, Institute of Systems Neuroscience, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

Our brains receive information from sensory inputs surveilling external occurrences and internal body parts. To understand how information flows in the brain circuit to orchestrate complex behaviors, we are now constructing complete wiring diagrams called “connectomes” that map all neural connections in the brains. A formidable challenge is to further extend the connectomics mapping to all body parts to reveal neural-behavior relationships. Taking Drosophila melanogaster as an example, I will discuss challenges in building whole-body connectomes and how that knowledge may help us better understand normal function and threat diseases.