Google's mapped fruit fly brain model trained to play video games

Following Google’s release of a detailed 3D reconstruction of a male fruit fly’s brain and central nervous system, researchers and engineers have successfully trained the digital model to play various video games.

Alex Wormuth, a software engineer at Coinbase, utilized the MaleCNS v1.0 fruit fly connectome to train the simulated brain to play Doom. In this setup, game frames stimulate sensory neurons, and neural activity is mapped to game controls, with dopamine cell stimulation serving as reinforcement. While the fly has completed thousands of rounds, performance remains limited.

Other developers have expanded these experiments to include Beat Saber, Super Mario 64, and Minecraft. In the case of Beat Saber, some users have employed reinforcement learning to teach the model how to hit notes. Additionally, the Flywire AI project, a collaboration with Princeton University, has performed similar simulations using a female fruit fly brain model containing over 160,000 neurons.