heeeelllp meee
A couple of weeks ago, scientists announced they had made a complete map of a male fruitfly brain (they’d already done a female fruitfly brain). They call it a connectome.
How did they do it? you ask. I’m glad you asked.
They used a microtome and sliced the tiny brain up very fine and then scanned the slices and put it together again by computer. They had to use an AI to fill in the missing bits – no matter how carefully you slice, something will be lost.
It’s absolutely worth clicking the link, then clicking the picture, then clicking it again to get the enlarged view. It’s wild. I wish it was the sort of online model you could move around in real time.
The brain has 166,700 retained cells and 25,582,938 connections, so naturally someone taught it to play Doom. “Doom frames are converted into sensory inputs, passed through the simulated MaleCNS v1.0 wiring, and that selected neurons are mapped to the game’s turn/move/fire controls.”
It is, by the way, a truly terrible Doom player. I haven’t seen it make a single kill. It must be a very rough approximation of what a fruitfly’s brain actually does, though, because I imagine a fly’s spatial sense is really quite good.
The sharp-eyed will have noticed the chatgpt in the URL of Doomfly (fly-brain-doom.awormuth.chatgpt.site). I asked ChatGPT about it and it said the site was hosted by an Open-AI server, but not actually ChatGPT. The unmodified AI itself cannot play Doom.
And then it posted a laughing emoji, which is just weird.
Posted: September 14th, 2026 under personal.
Comments: 7
Comments
Comment from Uncle AL
Time: September 14, 2026, 7:18 pm
The essential question, deeply existential. Is this: IS THE BRAIN HAVING FUN?
Comment from p2
Time: September 14, 2026, 11:50 pm
They did something similar to a couple cadavers back in the 70’s or 80’s I think. Filled them with dyes, froze ’em, sliced ’em up super thin then took pictures of each slice. Scanned the pics & digitized the whole thing. Doubt they can play Doom tho….
Comment from ExpressoBold Pureblood
Time: September 15, 2026, 12:00 am
Mary Shelley was ahead of her time.
I think this is how they re-animated Mitch McConnell…
Comment from Armybrat
Time: September 15, 2026, 12:30 am
Oh, hey! I think I won the dead pool! It appears my horse, princess Asteid of Norway died on Sept 11.
Comment from technochitlin
Time: September 15, 2026, 11:47 am
Neal Stephenson, in his latest book “Fall”, once again is ahead of his time. Scary!
Comment from ExpressoBold Pureblood
Time: September 15, 2026, 1:11 pm
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (2019)
Another view of “the singularity” but the author has a science/physics background. I don’t see many authors with the university credentials of Geography major, Physics minor.
Comment from Uncle AL
Time: September 15, 2026, 1:52 pm
I’ve got to chime on Neal Stephenson. A friend handed me Snow Crash almost 25 years ago and I’ve been a devout fan of Stephenson’s ever since. He was thrashing about a bit in his first two books(The Big U and Zodiac) but everything since has been at worst very good and at best outstanding. I’ve read Cryptonomicron multiple times now, and I’ve even read The Baroque Cycle three times and it’s a multi-thousand-page trilogy. I couldn’t be more enthusiastic in recommending his stuff even knowing it’s so eclectic that it isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.
I can hardly wait until next month when D: Heavy Water is released. It’s the second volume of the “Bomb Light” series that began with Polostan.
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