GoKawiilThe big picture: Google has mapped the brain and central nervous system of a fruit fly, and the dataset is already being used in an unlikely way: to train a simulated fly brain to play Doom and Super Mario 64. The experiments show how quickly a scientific dataset can become a development project once researchers make it publicly available.
The MaleCNS v1.0 dataset, announced by Google Research late last week, includes more than 166,000 neurons from an adult male fruit fly. Google worked with HHMI Janelia Research Campus and other researchers on the project, using AI to turn millions of 2D images into 3D reconstructions of neural structures.
The work is a major addition to fruit fly research, which has long been used in genetics and neuroscience. A complete map of the brain and central nervous system could help scientists study how neural circuits work and how they influence behavior.
It has also given developers a new technical challenge.
Software engineer Alex Wormuth connected the fly connectome to Doom, the classic first-person shooter. In Wormuth's setup, each game frame stimulates sensory neurons in the model, which then translates the resulting neural activity into game controls.
– Alex Wormuth (@nftechie_) September 6, 2026
"Each Doom frame stimulates sensory neurons. Neural activity is mapped to game controls. Damage triggers a stimulus to two PPL101 dopamine cells as reinforcement," Wormuth wrote.
The idea is to see whether the reconstructed neural system can learn to respond to the game environment. When the player takes damage, the model receives a stimulus intended to act as reinforcement. Wormuth has made the code open source and set up a live page showing the training process across the roughly 166,700-neuron model.
"Will the fly learn to survive?" Wormuth asked.
Developer Jessica Paquette is running a similar experiment with Super Mario 64. A short clip Paquette posted shows Mario repeatedly flying into a wall, suggesting that the system is still in its early stages.
... continue reading