Credit: Albert Cardona. Reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting, this image shows part of the central nervous system in a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). Transmission electron micrographs were used to create a digital colour-coded map of the area. An organism’s nervous system controls everything it does, from breathing and moving to thinking and feeling. Instructions to perform these tasks are carried by cells called neurones. A neurone able to sense vibrations (yellow) is surrounded here by lots of other neurones, each depicted as a single line. Messages enter (blue circles) and exit (red circles) neurones at points of contact called synapses. Other features of interest (orange circles), such as mitochondria, are also marked. The width of the image is approximately 15 micrometres (0.015 mm).
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