Fruit fly brain mapped over 20 years plays Minecraft on its own within 7 days
udmrzn · x · 2026-09-15
After 20 years of mapping, scientists fully digitized a fruit fly brain—166,700 neurons, the size of a poppy seed. That brain, copied into software, now walks a Minecraft world on its own with no programmed controls, driven purely by the fly's neural circuits:
- 51,000 spikes per tick, 126k neurons active
- DNa02 fires → turns; DNp01 → jumps; DNg60 → waits
- Mushroom body, antennal lobe, and motor neurons all lit up and running
The poster notes this is the smallest brain—a mouse has 70 million neurons, a human 86 billion—the method is proven, and compute keeps getting cheaper every year.
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