It's taken them ten years, using advanced artificial intelligence systems, to identify its detailed structure, composition and connections. In essence, a wiring diagram, scientifically called the fly connectome.

Even though human brains are a million times larger than a fly's, Dr Gregory Jefferis of the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge says that the new connectome is the first step in truly understanding, not just how fly brains work, but ours, too. That's because there are likely to be similarities in the way they're both wired.

It will take decades to have a complete map of the human brain. But this analysis of fruit flies is the start of a new, deeper understanding of our own minds.