>In work published earlier this month in [*Nature Neuroscience*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01766-5), Noorman and colleagues showed that a small network of cells in the fruit fly brain was capable of completing a highly complex task with impressive accuracy: maintaining a consistent sense of direction. Smaller networks were thought to be capable of only discrete internal mental representations, not continuous ones. These networks can “perform more complex computations than we previously thought,” says Noorman, an associate at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Here’s an excerpt from the article.
>Small may be mightier than we think when it comes to brains. This is what neuroscientist Marcella Noorman is learning from her neuroscientific research into tiny animals like fruit flies, whose brains hold [around 140,000 neurons](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03190-y) each, compared to the [roughly 86 billion](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/scientists-build-largest-maps-date-cells-human-brain) in the human brain.
>In work published earlier this month in [*Nature Neuroscience*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01766-5), Noorman and colleagues showed that a small network of cells in the fruit fly brain was capable of completing a highly complex task with impressive accuracy: maintaining a consistent sense of direction. Smaller networks were thought to be capable of only discrete internal mental representations, not continuous ones. These networks can “perform more complex computations than we previously thought,” says Noorman, an associate at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.