Yet nearly three decades later, Brenner’s diagram continues to mystify. Scientists know roughly what individual neurons in C. elegans do and can say, for example, which neurons fire to send the worm wriggling forward or backward. But more complex questions remain unanswered. How does the worm remember? What is constant in the minds of worms? What makes each one individual? In part, these disappointments were a problem of technology, which has made connectome mapping so onerous that until recently nobody considered doing more. In science, it is a great accomplishment to make the first map, but far more useful to have 10, or a million, that can be compared with one another. “C. elegans was a classic case of being too far ahead of your time,” says Gerry Rubin of Janelia. - www.nytimes.com