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For the first time, scientists have mapped the complete brain and central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly — a key model organism in science. 🪰Working alongside HHMI Janelia Research Campus and the scientific community, @GoogleResearch scientists and researchers used… pic.twitter.com/dpcXH4jmNS September 3, 2026
Now, for the first time, the complete brain and central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly have been fully mapped. Google Research scientists worked alongside HHMI Janelia Research Campus and the scientific community to achieve this milestone. In the social media post outlining the achievement, Google claimed that AI was used “to combine millions of 2D images into 3D neural shapes, reconstructing a record-breaking 166,000+ neurons.” That’s somewhat below the estimated 86 billion neurons in the human brain. AI data centers are going to need more RAM , folks.
This scientific breakthrough is going to “accelerate our understanding of the brain, and is a major milestone in neuroscience,” noted Google last Thursday. By Tuesday, it was already being trained to play classic video games .
I'm training a fly brain to play Doom using the full MaleCNS v1.0 fruit fly connectome.Each Doom frame stimulates sensory neurons. Neural activity is mapped to game controls. Damage triggers a stimulus to two PPL101 dopamine cells as reinforcement.Will the fly learn to… https://t.co/ObCJ03gxy3 pic.twitter.com/H2YDBtyuR8 September 6, 2026
We’ve seen software engineer Alex Wormuth and ‘C++ ragebaiteur’ Jessica Paquette already demonstrate fly-brain video game training. Their fly-brain tinkering focuses on Doom and Mario 64 , respectively.
AI coder gets Doom running on a custom CPU designed by GPT-5.6 Sol
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/programming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/programming/google-maps-entire-brain-and-central-nervous-system-of-adult-male-fruit-fly-software-engineers-immediately-make-it-run-doom-ai-powered-3d-model-of-over-166-000-neurons-can-also-play-super-mario-64#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.