06 Sep 2026
Self-led workshop launch
Our self-led online workshop, originally built for NeuroFly 2026, is a free set of sessions on finding, connecting and examining neurons across all the connectomes on VFB — open to anyone, any time.
Virtual Fly Brain News
03 Sep 2026
HHMI Janelia connectomics history video
An HHMI video tracing the nearly 20-year story behind Janelia's complete fruit fly connectome, from the 2008 project launch through FIB-SEM imaging, machine-learning-assisted tracing, and the 2025 completion.
03 Sep 2026
HHMI Janelia full male CNS connectome video
A silent HHMI Janelia visualisation of the newly completed male fly connectome — the first map of an entire central nervous system, covering the brain, both optic lobes, and the ventral nerve cord.
03 Sep 2026
HHMI Janelia male CNS connectome video
A silent HHMI Janelia visualisation of the complete male fly central nervous system connectome, produced to illustrate comparisons between male and female brains.
30 Aug 2026
NeuroFly 2026
VFB will be giving a talk and running live demos, alongside our posters, at NeuroFly 2026 in Cologne, Germany.
01 Jul 2026
BANC connectome tour video
A two-part narrated tour of BANC, the most extensive fly connectome to date, showing how sensory-motor circuits linking the brain and ventral nerve cord coordinate behaviour across the whole central nervous system.
21 Jun 2026
VFB MCP Tool Launch
Explore Virtual Fly Brain data directly through your favorite LLM with the new VFB Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool - now available at vfb3-mcp.virtualflybrain.org
07 May 2026
Cardona lab eFIB-SEM larval brain video
A brief fly-through of an enhanced FIB-SEM volume of the fruit fly larval brain, imaged at 8x8x8 nanometre resolution in Albert Cardona's lab at the MRC LMB.
01 Mar 2026
FlyBase Funding
FlyBase's March 2026 update: US funding restored, the Cambridge curation team still unfunded
23 Jun 2025
HHMI VNC confocal map video
A silent HHMI video showing confocal microscopy images of fruit fly neurons combined, piece by piece, into a rough map of the ventral nerve cord — the insect equivalent of a spinal cord.
29 May 2025
Updated NBLAST scores
VFB neuron-to-neuron and neuron-to-expression pattern similarity scores (NBLAST) have been expanded to include the male-CNS optic lobe and FAFB-FlyWire connectome datasets.
15 May 2025
Wellcome video with Greg Jefferis
A Wellcome Guest Lecture with Greg Jefferis on why his team mapped the fruit fly brain's connectome using AI, and what connectomes could mean for understanding human health.
01 Mar 2025
HHMI optic lobe motion circuit video
A silent HHMI visualisation picking out a simple neural circuit for motion detection and hazard evasion among the dense mass of neurons in the fruit fly eye and optic lobe.
02 Oct 2024
FlyWire Princeton connectome render video
A silent visualisation from FlyWire Princeton of the whole adult fly brain connectome, marking the publication of the FlyWire Consortium's Nature 2024 papers.
25 Aug 2024
NeuroFly 2024
VFB will be running a workshop on integrating Drosophila connectomics and transcriptomics data.
25 Aug 2024
Neuron display in VFBconnect
This guide will help you use the VFBConnect library to interact with Virtual Fly Brain (VFB) data, specifically focusing on working with neuron images and their representations. The examples provided cover retrieving …
29 Jul 2024
Neurotransmitter Predictions
Predicted neurotransmitters for EM neurons are now being shown on VFB! They are currently available for Hemibrain and MANC datasets.
30 Apr 2024
FlyBase Split-GAL4 reports
FlyBase now has 'Split System Combination' pages displaying curated information for Split-GAL4 lines.
10 Apr 2024
Transcriptomics data
Transcriptomics data is now available on VFB! Find scRNAseq clusters from the Term Info pane for a cell type of interest.
19 Mar 2024
Larval split-GAL4 raw images
Raw images from the 1020 Larval split-GAL4 lines and 350 Generation 1 LexA lines included in Meissner et al., 2024 are now available on VFB.
17 Jan 2024
Cardona "Brain: What For?" seminar video
Albert Cardona's MRC LMB seminar for non-scientists, using the Drosophila larva to ask what a brain actually contributes when so much behaviour turns out not to need one.
11 Mar 2022
Safari Issue Fix
Virtual Fly Brain 3D browser won't load on Safari Version 15.3 (17612.4.9.1.8) with an experimental feature enabled. Please follow these instructions to disable it until Apple fixes the issue.
18 Dec 2021
Google Issue
VFB has been affected by an issue with google's indexing which has affected our ranking in their search results. We applogise for any inconvenience but have been assured this is now fixed and should get back to normal …
07 Mar 2019
Columbia SCAPE larval proprioception video
A Columbia Zuckerman Institute video on SCAPE, a high-speed 3D microscope that recorded proprioceptive sensory neurons firing inside a freely crawling fruit fly larva.
19 Jul 2018
HHMI Janelia full adult fly brain EM video
An HHMI video on Janelia's first nanoscale, whole-brain electron microscopy dataset of the adult fruit fly brain — the imaging effort behind the FAFB dataset.
06 Sep 2017
HHMI Janelia giant fiber escape video
An HHMI video on research from the Card lab at Janelia showing how a fly's giant fiber descending neurons integrate looming visual features to choose between a long and a short escape takeoff.
05 Apr 2017
Lo lab fly brain simulation video
A simulation of fruit fly brain activity from the Lo lab at National Tsing Hua University, run with their FlySim simulator on circuits and parameters derived from the FlyCircuit database.
11 Sep 2014
Lo lab "Building a fly brain" video
A visualisation from the Lo lab at National Tsing Hua University building a fly brain from FlyCircuit data by placing around 18,000 individually reconstructed neurons into position one by one.