How Insect Brains Melt and Rewire During Metamorphosis

Science@kbin.social – 0 points – 9 months ago

Do fruit flies remember their larval lives? To find out, scientists made the neurons inside larvae glow, then tracked how they reshuffled as they formed adult brains.

The researchers suggest that these relocating neurons are only temporary guests in the larval mushroom body, taking on necessary larval functions for a while but then returning to their ancestral tasks in the adult brain. That’s in keeping with the idea that the adult brain is the older, ancestral form within the lineage and the simpler larval brain is a derived form that came much later.

Huh, that's pretty interesting.