I'll ask this here, because I'm curious, and it seems that you've read at least a little on this subject...
Is it known how much individual variation there is between different roundworm brains? If you grow two roundworms, even from the same DNA, does the resulting brain have all the same wiring, or is it different based on environmental factors?
I ask because I thought that brain growth involves a feedback loop, where individual experiences during maturation influence the actual physical structure of the brain to some degree.
In a round worm, the neural structure is remarkably constant. The exact same number of neurons emerge and form the exact same network in every worm! But in each worm they might move a bit around slightly especially in their head region which makes quick identification a little hard!
But you can see why this makes the worm the best first organism to decipher the full neural network in. In my opinion not enough people are working on this. There are maybe 5 labs that are working on this topic at this moment!
Is it known how much individual variation there is between different roundworm brains? If you grow two roundworms, even from the same DNA, does the resulting brain have all the same wiring, or is it different based on environmental factors?
I ask because I thought that brain growth involves a feedback loop, where individual experiences during maturation influence the actual physical structure of the brain to some degree.