“With the default-mode network* (DMN) playing so central a role not only in basic brain science but also in mental health, I propose that the next technological development in neuroscience will be 4-D imaging of the living brains of genetically accessible model organisms,” says Björn Brembs, a Heisenberg Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

“With newer functional technology we would not only be able to look for the DMN in the brains of resting flies; we could also use the powerful genetic arsenal of this and other model systems to manipulate their brains and thereby find out how they balance their internal and external demands.

“Using the Drosophila fly brain as a model for studying human brain function took a leap forward with the recent mapping of some 16,000 of the fly’s 100,000 neurons (Curr Biol, 21:1-11, 2011). A proposed microscope will be able to image the fly brain through a small hole in the fly’s head. The technique will allow the capture of three-dimensional movies of brain activity at a temporal resolution about two-fold higher than fMRI (~10Hz) with a spatial resolution many times higher (~3μm).”

* One of the key brain networks active during the resting state when we let our minds wander. It is inactivated by task-related networks in a push-pull fashion. Impairments in the ability to dynamically activate or inactivate the DMN have been found to be associated with attention deficits, depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, and many other psychiatric disorders.