Deciphering the Adult Brain: From Neuroanatomy to Behavior

The Drosophila brain with an estimated 100,000 neurons provides at once an excellent opportunity to describe a complex brain in great detail and to identify the genetic and neurobiological basis of a wide array of behaviors. Furthermore, the sequencing of the genome with the concurrent identification of the elaborate homology of human and Drosophila genes and numerous functional studies have established the high relevance of Drosophila to understand diseases of the human brain. An overview is provided of available techniques to visualize neurons and neural circuitry and to study their function in behavior. Various resources are listed, and future and emerging technologies are discussed.