Google Mapped A Fruit Fly Brain, So Engineers Taught It To Play Doom
Google released a complete 3D brain map of an adult male fruit fly—the largest connectome to date, with 166,000+ neurons and 125 million synaptic connections, created over a decade using electron microscopy and AI. While scientists celebrated its neuroscience value, developers quickly repurposed it: Alex Wormuth turned the connectome into a neural simulator playing Doom, using dopamine cells for reinforcement learning; Jessica Paquette piloted Mario in Super Mario 64; others ported it to Beat Saber and Minecraft. These demos validate the map’s utility for processing sensory data, with Google now targeting fish and mice.
