Fruit flies control their limbs without using their brains

For decades, neuroscientists operated under the assumption that an animal's brain acts as a centralized commander, dictating every movement of the body from the top down. However, a massive effort to map the entire nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has revealed a much more decentralized reality. While the fly's brain contains the vast majority of its 160,000 neurons, the actual mechanics of movement are governed by local neural circuits situated in the limbs themselves.