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Step inside a fly and follow sight, walking, steering & grooming circuits! Powered by FlyWire BANC, a wiring map of a fly’s brain and central nervous system published in nature this June. Yesterday brought MaleCNS in Cell from HHMI Google Research, an invaluable male counterpart. Now for comparative connectomics!

Amy Robinson Sterling

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41,933 views • 2 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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4 Comments

Soumyaranjan Sahu2 months ago

@FlyWireNews @Nature @CellCellPress @hhmi_science @GoogleResearch I was really trying to figure out how LC cells encode features so early in the optic lobe. Already familiar with LC11, but it still doesn't explain how the fly sense large moving objects or how LPTC creates optical flow ?

Samuel tindell2 months ago

@FlyWireNews @Nature @CellCellPress @hhmi_science @GoogleResearch Can I use these connectomics tools to figure out what kind of cells these are that express Piwi in the brain? I’ve never known where to start with this question.

Akmal Alif2 months ago

@FlyWireNews @Nature @CellCellPress @hhmi_science @GoogleResearch 👀

Naman Katyal2 months ago

And just today I watched the new video from Howtown on YT about understanding brain functioning in hibernating animals which trigger long term torpor. Scientists are actually trying to experiment with this in space with squirreastronauts. Imagine mapping brain network in bigger species and unlocking space travel to Mars 😃

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Introducing The BANC (Brain and Nerve Cord) connectome preprint! Thanks to all who helped make this synapse-resolution map of an adult fruit fly central nervous system possible! Preprint: The BANC is publicly available in Codex:

Introducing The BANC (Brain and Nerve Cord) connectome preprint! Thanks to all who helped make this synapse-resolution map of an adult fruit fly central nervous system possible! Preprint: The BANC is publicly available in Codex:

FlyWire

11,452 views • 1 year ago

166,700 fruit fly neurons are walking a robot cat across a desk right now. In September 2026, Google Research and HHMI Janelia mapped every neuron and every connection in an adult male fruit fly's full nervous system, brain, optic lobes, and ventral nerve cord together, and published it in Cell. The number is staggering on its own: 166,700 neurons, roughly 125 million synapses, the most complete nervous system map of any animal ever built. Now that exact wiring is running live, simulated neuron for neuron, inside a small robotic quadruped equipped with a camera and motion sensors. Movement comes in through the sensors, the biological circuitry fires the way it always did, and the output drives the robot's legs directly. No one wrote the balance logic. No one coded the gait. The insect's own nervous system does that job, just on legs it never had. To be clear about what this is and isn't: nothing biological is alive in this loop. It's a full computational reconstruction of real neural wiring, controlling hardware instead of an insect body. The brain is real. The body is borrowed. Remarkable proof that a mapped nervous system can drive any body you give it, or a preview of something people aren't ready to think through yet?

166,700 fruit fly neurons are walking a robot cat across a desk right now. In September 2026, Google Research and HHMI Janelia mapped every neuron and every connection in an adult male fruit fly's full nervous system, brain, optic lobes, and ventral nerve cord together, and published it in Cell. The number is staggering on its own: 166,700 neurons, roughly 125 million synapses, the most complete nervous system map of any animal ever built. Now that exact wiring is running live, simulated neuron for neuron, inside a small robotic quadruped equipped with a camera and motion sensors. Movement comes in through the sensors, the biological circuitry fires the way it always did, and the output drives the robot's legs directly. No one wrote the balance logic. No one coded the gait. The insect's own nervous system does that job, just on legs it never had. To be clear about what this is and isn't: nothing biological is alive in this loop. It's a full computational reconstruction of real neural wiring, controlling hardware instead of an insect body. The brain is real. The body is borrowed. Remarkable proof that a mapped nervous system can drive any body you give it, or a preview of something people aren't ready to think through yet?

Zentrix⌚️

232,778 views • 2 months ago

🪰 A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system—a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the millions of connections between them. 🔗

🪰 A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system—a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the millions of connections between them. 🔗

HHMI | Janelia

24,432 views • 1 year ago

A developer used the wiring of a fruit fly’s nervous system to play Chrome’s dinosaur game. Fly Dino, built by Mert Cobanov, uses part of a public dataset created by scientists from HHMI Janelia, Google Research, and their collaborators. The full map contains over 166,000 neurons, but Mert simulated a circuit of just 80. The game feeds information into the circuit, while a separately trained model translates its activity into actions like jumping and ducking. The bigger idea: when researchers make their work public, developers can turn scientific data into experiments anyone can try.

A developer used the wiring of a fruit fly’s nervous system to play Chrome’s dinosaur game. Fly Dino, built by Mert Cobanov, uses part of a public dataset created by scientists from HHMI Janelia, Google Research, and their collaborators. The full map contains over 166,000 neurons, but Mert simulated a circuit of just 80. The game feeds information into the circuit, while a separately trained model translates its activity into actions like jumping and ducking. The bigger idea: when researchers make their work public, developers can turn scientific data into experiments anyone can try.

Pukerainbow 🤮🌈

18,893 views • 1 month ago

$BRAIN just got a real brain. v0.4.0 runs the full MaleCNS v1.0 connectome: 166,700 neurons and 124M synapses firing in one spiking simulation. Camera motion now reaches identified fly visual neurons, travels through the wiring, and triggers real escape and steering circuits that produce motor commands. The loop already runs up to 6.5x real time on an RTX 3050. Shuffle the connectome and the behaviour vanishes. The wiring is doing the work. Next up: transaction → sensory neurons → 166,700-neuron brain → movement

$BRAIN just got a real brain. v0.4.0 runs the full MaleCNS v1.0 connectome: 166,700 neurons and 124M synapses firing in one spiking simulation. Camera motion now reaches identified fly visual neurons, travels through the wiring, and triggers real escape and steering circuits that produce motor commands. The loop already runs up to 6.5x real time on an RTX 3050. Shuffle the connectome and the behaviour vanishes. The wiring is doing the work. Next up: transaction → sensory neurons → 166,700-neuron brain → movement

Frank

12,037 views • 2 months ago

A detailed map of mouse brain cell structure and connections, offering insights into how they relate to activity in the mouse brain, is revealed in a package of papers from MICrONS consortium in nature & Nature Methods: allen institute naturePortfolio

A detailed map of mouse brain cell structure and connections, offering insights into how they relate to activity in the mouse brain, is revealed in a package of papers from MICrONS consortium in nature & Nature Methods: allen institute naturePortfolio

Springer Nature

16,961 views • 1 year ago

A speck in a dish—that’s all the nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster looks like to the naked eye. But look closely enough, and it resolves into a network of 166,700 nerve cells connected through 124.2 million synapses. The intricate map—called a connectome—has now been published, marking the end of an ambitious 20-year research project. Learn more: News from Science

A speck in a dish—that’s all the nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster looks like to the naked eye. But look closely enough, and it resolves into a network of 166,700 nerve cells connected through 124.2 million synapses. The intricate map—called a connectome—has now been published, marking the end of an ambitious 20-year research project. Learn more: News from Science

Science Magazine

110,333 views • 2 months ago

THE FLY BRAIN ESCAPED THE COMPUTER. I PUT IT INSIDE A PHYSICAL ROBOT. Scientists released a reconstructed map containing 166,700 neurons from a fruit fly. I connected it to a Strandbeest. The panel in the top-right shows the simulated brain running. Its neural activity is translated into motor commands that move the mechanical legs below. The catch: this is a computational model built from biological wiring. I engineered the interface connecting its outputs to the robot. First, the fly brain entered DOOM. Then it played Chrome Dino. Now it has a physical body. 166,700 neurons. 25 million connections. One nervous system walking through the real world.

THE FLY BRAIN ESCAPED THE COMPUTER. I PUT IT INSIDE A PHYSICAL ROBOT. Scientists released a reconstructed map containing 166,700 neurons from a fruit fly. I connected it to a Strandbeest. The panel in the top-right shows the simulated brain running. Its neural activity is translated into motor commands that move the mechanical legs below. The catch: this is a computational model built from biological wiring. I engineered the interface connecting its outputs to the robot. First, the fly brain entered DOOM. Then it played Chrome Dino. Now it has a physical body. 166,700 neurons. 25 million connections. One nervous system walking through the real world.

Frank

5,193,098 views • 2 months ago

A speck in a dish—that’s all the nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster looks like to the naked eye. But look closely enough, and it resolves into a network of 166,700 nerve cells connected through 124.2 million synapses. The intricate map—called a connectome—has now been published, marking the end of an ambitious 20-year research project. Learn more:

A speck in a dish—that’s all the nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster looks like to the naked eye. But look closely enough, and it resolves into a network of 166,700 nerve cells connected through 124.2 million synapses. The intricate map—called a connectome—has now been published, marking the end of an ambitious 20-year research project. Learn more:

News from Science

29,460 views • 2 months ago

A DEAD FLY IS DRIVING MY ROBOT RIGHT NOW. Not a metaphor. A reconstructed neural map of a fruit fly - 166,700 neurons, 25.6 million synapses - is now running on my MacBook and steering a quadruped robot in my living room. Here's how it works: 1. MaleCNS - a full connectome reconstruction of an adult fly brain - runs as a live simulation on my laptop. 2. I used Codex to build a decoder that reads the simulation's neural activity and turns it into movement commands: forward, left, right. 3. Those commands get sent over Wi-Fi to the robot, which still uses its own firmware to drive all 12 servos. The brain only decides where to go, not how to move each leg. No scripts. No prerecorded paths. The simulation runs continuously, live, while the robot walks. The fly has been dead for years. But its reconstructed nervous system is producing real decisions again, in real time, controlling a machine that didn't exist when it was alive. Next step: feed the robot's sensors back into the simulation and close the loop. A dead brain that can finally feel the world it's walking through. This fly has been dead for years. Its brain runs on my laptop. Its decisions move a machine through my living room. One dead nervous system, walking again.

A DEAD FLY IS DRIVING MY ROBOT RIGHT NOW. Not a metaphor. A reconstructed neural map of a fruit fly - 166,700 neurons, 25.6 million synapses - is now running on my MacBook and steering a quadruped robot in my living room. Here's how it works: 1. MaleCNS - a full connectome reconstruction of an adult fly brain - runs as a live simulation on my laptop. 2. I used Codex to build a decoder that reads the simulation's neural activity and turns it into movement commands: forward, left, right. 3. Those commands get sent over Wi-Fi to the robot, which still uses its own firmware to drive all 12 servos. The brain only decides where to go, not how to move each leg. No scripts. No prerecorded paths. The simulation runs continuously, live, while the robot walks. The fly has been dead for years. But its reconstructed nervous system is producing real decisions again, in real time, controlling a machine that didn't exist when it was alive. Next step: feed the robot's sensors back into the simulation and close the loop. A dead brain that can finally feel the world it's walking through. This fly has been dead for years. Its brain runs on my laptop. Its decisions move a machine through my living room. One dead nervous system, walking again.

kiruwaaaa

78,251 views • 2 months ago

A massive milestone for #Neuroscience! 🧠 The complete brain-and-cord connectome of the adult fruit fly is officially published in nature. Check out this incredible visual journey tracing how the CNS controls the body. 🪰 🔗 Tyler Sloan Alexander Bates #BANC #Neuroscience, #Connectome #Drosophila, #BrainMapping, #Neurobiology, #NatureJournal

A massive milestone for #Neuroscience! 🧠 The complete brain-and-cord connectome of the adult fruit fly is officially published in nature. Check out this incredible visual journey tracing how the CNS controls the body. 🪰 🔗 Tyler Sloan Alexander Bates #BANC #Neuroscience, #Connectome #Drosophila, #BrainMapping, #Neurobiology, #NatureJournal

Sheila Macrine, Ph.D.

15,252 views • 5 months ago

FLY BRAIN PUT INSIDE PHYSICAL ROBOT. Not literally. They mapped all 166,700 real neurons from a fly's brain and rebuilt the entire wiring as a computational model. Every connection copied, nothing simplified. That simulated brain has already lived several lives. It played DOOM. It beat Chrome Dino. Each time researchers were testing whether insect-level neural wiring could handle tasks it never evolved for. Now the same model controls a physical machine, and they dropped it straight into a maze. Cardboard walls, tight turns, no map given in advance. The robot's neural activity gets translated directly into motor commands, and those commands drove it through the maze and out the other side. Researchers are clear this isn't a biological brain in a robot. It's an engineered interface between a reconstructed nervous system and a machine body. But a fly's mind just solved a physical maze. Insect cognition is running real robots today. Human-scale digital brains doing the same thing feels a lot closer now. Wild breakthrough or the first step toward something we're not ready for?

FLY BRAIN PUT INSIDE PHYSICAL ROBOT. Not literally. They mapped all 166,700 real neurons from a fly's brain and rebuilt the entire wiring as a computational model. Every connection copied, nothing simplified. That simulated brain has already lived several lives. It played DOOM. It beat Chrome Dino. Each time researchers were testing whether insect-level neural wiring could handle tasks it never evolved for. Now the same model controls a physical machine, and they dropped it straight into a maze. Cardboard walls, tight turns, no map given in advance. The robot's neural activity gets translated directly into motor commands, and those commands drove it through the maze and out the other side. Researchers are clear this isn't a biological brain in a robot. It's an engineered interface between a reconstructed nervous system and a machine body. But a fly's mind just solved a physical maze. Insect cognition is running real robots today. Human-scale digital brains doing the same thing feels a lot closer now. Wild breakthrough or the first step toward something we're not ready for?

Zentrix⌚️

23,705 views • 2 months ago

Someone gave an AAC Google’s fruit-fly research. "Flysim" built a society simulation.. for flies. So you could annoy them. Using 164,506 MaleCNS neurons, with WebSocket brain telemetry. Place food, try to catch them, and see how they react. An autonomous agent building simulations, for flies, was not in a bingo card this year. but all things possible.

Someone gave an AAC Google’s fruit-fly research. "Flysim" built a society simulation.. for flies. So you could annoy them. Using 164,506 MaleCNS neurons, with WebSocket brain telemetry. Place food, try to catch them, and see how they react. An autonomous agent building simulations, for flies, was not in a bingo card this year. but all things possible.

Orbofi

41,891 views • 2 months ago

We put a fly’s brain in the Matrix. GPT-6 Astra + Higgsfield built an interactive 3D world. Change the fly’s surroundings and watch its simulated brain activity respond.

We put a fly’s brain in the Matrix. GPT-6 Astra + Higgsfield built an interactive 3D world. Change the fly’s surroundings and watch its simulated brain activity respond.

Higgsfield AI 🧩

22,578 views • 2 months ago

ChatGPT is now available as an add-on in Excel and Google Sheets, with support for data analysis, formula writing, spreadsheet updates, and step-by-step explanations. Powered by GPT-5.5.

ChatGPT is now available as an add-on in Excel and Google Sheets, with support for data analysis, formula writing, spreadsheet updates, and step-by-step explanations. Powered by GPT-5.5.

Byte

22,032 views • 6 months ago

2. AI can now decode brain signals Into video AI can officially read minds. In a new research paper published by Nature, researchers developed a new AI method called CEBRA that translates brain signals into video.

2. AI can now decode brain signals Into video AI can officially read minds. In a new research paper published by Nature, researchers developed a new AI method called CEBRA that translates brain signals into video.

Rowan Cheung

124,378 views • 3 years ago

For the first time ever, a fruit fly brain has been trained to launch a memecoin. Not "AI inspired by a brain" — the real connectome. 165,122 neurons, 10,228,000 synaptic connections, every one traced from an actual male Drosophila by electron microscopy. Janelia FlyEM + Google Research, released CC-BY. How it works: Screenshots of the live launchpad go in through 892 retinotopic hex columns into L1 and L2 — the neurons sitting directly behind a fly's photoreceptors. All 165,122 integrate. The cursor comes back out of the descending neurons a fly actually walks with: DNa02's left-right asymmetry steers, DNa01 drives forward, DNp09 clicks. The wiring is never trained. Only synaptic gains — you don't get to invent connections the fly doesn't have. Proof its eye is doing real work: in light mode it filled 0 of 3 form fields. In dark mode, 2 of 3. Its retina is a luminance map, so invert the contrast and it goes blind. And the honest split: the fly types the description and the ticker. The rig does the name, the pair and the tax. CA: 0x4eb990547bce4a982432ca88cf5fae7eed1a2d35

For the first time ever, a fruit fly brain has been trained to launch a memecoin. Not "AI inspired by a brain" — the real connectome. 165,122 neurons, 10,228,000 synaptic connections, every one traced from an actual male Drosophila by electron microscopy. Janelia FlyEM + Google Research, released CC-BY. How it works: Screenshots of the live launchpad go in through 892 retinotopic hex columns into L1 and L2 — the neurons sitting directly behind a fly's photoreceptors. All 165,122 integrate. The cursor comes back out of the descending neurons a fly actually walks with: DNa02's left-right asymmetry steers, DNa01 drives forward, DNp09 clicks. The wiring is never trained. Only synaptic gains — you don't get to invent connections the fly doesn't have. Proof its eye is doing real work: in light mode it filled 0 of 3 form fields. In dark mode, 2 of 3. Its retina is a luminance map, so invert the contrast and it goes blind. And the honest split: the fly types the description and the ticker. The rig does the name, the pair and the tax. CA: 0x4eb990547bce4a982432ca88cf5fae7eed1a2d35

Fruit fly dev

815,582 views • 2 months ago

This is exactly how to run and fully setup #googleads for your #localbusiness in 2026. This is how to create a Google Ads campaign in 2026, step by step from campaign setup, keyword research, and conversion tracking in #googleadwords #digitalmarketing #entrepreneur

This is exactly how to run and fully setup #googleads for your #localbusiness in 2026. This is how to create a Google Ads campaign in 2026, step by step from campaign setup, keyword research, and conversion tracking in #googleadwords #digitalmarketing #entrepreneur

Brandon Ewing 💫 | Google Ads

209,900 views • 10 months ago

(1/2) When Janelia set out to map every neuron in the fly brain in 2008, many thought it couldn’t be done. Nearly 20 years later, a complete wiring diagram of the 166,000+ neurons of the adult male fruit fly is helping to reveal the brain’s secrets:

(1/2) When Janelia set out to map every neuron in the fly brain in 2008, many thought it couldn’t be done. Nearly 20 years later, a complete wiring diagram of the 166,000+ neurons of the adult male fruit fly is helping to reveal the brain’s secrets:

HHMI

28,154 views • 2 months ago

We've uploaded a fruit fly. We took the FlyWire connectome of the fruit fly brain, applied a simple neuron model (Philip Shiu Nature 2024) and used it to control a MuJoCo physics-simulated body, closing the loop from neural activation to action. A few things I want to say about what this means and where we're going at eon. 🧵

We've uploaded a fruit fly. We took the FlyWire connectome of the fruit fly brain, applied a simple neuron model (Philip Shiu Nature 2024) and used it to control a MuJoCo physics-simulated body, closing the loop from neural activation to action. A few things I want to say about what this means and where we're going at eon. 🧵

Michael Andregg

2,009,761 views • 8 months ago