Terminology of the insect brain regions
A board of members are discussing the unified terminology of insect brain regions.
Optic Lobe
Central brain: olfactory system
Central brain: central complex
Central brain: other neuropiles
Suboesophageal Ganglion
Ventral Ganglion
About the BrainName project
Neuroscience using insect brains as model systems has become increasingly popular and important. One and a half century of active reseach on insect neurobiology, however, caused various inconsistencies in the terminology used for describing neurons and brain regions of different insects. Apparently corresponding neuropile areas might be called with different names, and borders between regions had been defined irrespective of the situation in other species. Even the axis of the brain, e.g. which direction should be called anterior, is a matter of debate. This makes interspecific comparison of brain structures rather difficult, in spite of the fact that comparison at the genome level has become a routine process. Attendants of the Janelia Farm insect neuroanatomy meeting in March 2007 agreed to establish a working group that identifies existing inconsistencies and propose a terminology standards that researchers of all insect species could use. To have intense discussion, the size of the initial discussion group was limited to a relatively small one.
The people currently in the discussion group is as follows:
George Boyan (Univ. Muenchen)
Martin Heisenberg (Univ. Wuerzburg)
Wolfgang Roessler (Univ. Wuerzburg)
Uwe Homberg (Univ. Marburg)
Steffen Harzsch (Max Planck Institute)
Douglas Armstrong (Univ. Edinburgh)
Leslie Vosshall (Rockfeller Univ.)
Julie Simpson (Janelia Farm)
Nick Strausfeld (Univ. Arizona)
Linda Restifo (Univ. Arizona)
Kei Ito (Univ. Tokyo)
These people are expected to provide professional information about the situaiton of the neural systems they work, or they know of. Should a matter of important debate had identified, they can consult with other people for further discussion. Once a basic proposal would be established, they are expected to promote the new system to the people of their own research field.
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